


Metallic Ink

by Shadowdianne



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU, Drug use and druge abuse mentioned, F/F, no mentions of Hood, no mentions of Hook, vaguely steampunk-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-20 22:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11930739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/Shadowdianne
Summary: Due to a sudden series of murders in where everything seems to point to the drug known as “Dust”  (Which also fuels almost the entirely of this world in where magic is a relic of the past and only machines are able to use the dust as their gas) Emma and Regina, members of the Division -The Police force of this world- led the case in where the only one in whom they can confide is each other. As they go deeper into the case they discover that, magic, perhaps, is not as dead is it was thought it was.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First of all thank you so much for everyone who read the first version of this and thought it wasn't a total crap (They know who they are) Also, thank you to the boost those first days for my cheerleader kxmalakhan on twitter.  
> This story is slightly different from what I've done before and, at the same time, it's something I feel that it's totally predictable of myself. Set in an AU reality, magic works and exists slightly different from what we know of OUAT's usual mechanics.  
> I truly hope you enjoy the ride alongside with Emma and Regina's story in where, no, they don't hate each other at first because, why not, and are already at the stage of deep friendship in where they both want a little more.  
> And don't worry, despite my inner evilness there's not character death in this one. I swear!
> 
> PS: Thank you to the SuperNova mods for making this possible. Hosting such a challenge is never easy and they managed not once but twice to do it so beautifully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The art for the fic was made by Black_Byakko, check her out!

**The** thump-thump on her temples was steady as she run, her boots hitting the poorly treated pavement in where muddy puddles would have reflected her face if she has dared to look downwards. Her lungs burnt and a worrisome jab seemed to bit on her chest every time she tried to drag yet another breath.

Around her, the small street was bathed in an almost yellowish light that came from the lamps firmly set on hinges to the brink that created the houses that hovered over her running form. She didn’t have any more time and she could feel it on the cold sweat that was beginning to pool on the back of her neck, her blonde tresses hitting her face just as she looked at her right, her eyes trying to see anything on the dirty-packed floor.

Green eyes widening, she ducked to her left as the symbol she had been searching came into view; a quickly drawn swan that welcomed her just as she tripped, her right leg almost giving in beneath her own weight.

“No more doughnuts.” She promised herself while turning abruptly, a small passage -about half of her own height- opening before her just a few meters away from the swan was just as a brawl of snarls and grunts could be heard echoing on the small and maze-like street she had been running through. Almost falling face-first into the dirty floor, Emma turned, a hand already grabbing her swan necklace in where a small dose of Mix shone slightly under the warmth Emma’s fingers irradiated.

“Put that down.” A voice whispered at her left, Regina’s profile appearing through the shadows in where the small hiding place seemed to be bathed on thanks to the thick curtains strategically put together so the sun was mostly blocked as well as the entrance Emma had fallen through. “They are almost here.”

Emma let the necklace down, the Mix’s glow subsiding just as quickly as it had appeared. At the other side of the carefully hidden entrance more snarls -louder than before- could be heard alongside with a putrid smell that managed to find its way on their hiding place. Trying not to gag, Emma approached the entrance, careful to put her right hand over the small cylinder she had strapped to her hip. At her back, she could feel Regina moving, approaching her while a metallic murmur filled the place.

Turning towards where the brunette was already feeding a dose of Dust to her gauntlet, Emma pointed to the copper lines that run through the brunette’s fingers, a spark already visible on the tips. “I thought you said that we needed to be quiet.” She said through clenched teeth, trying to not make any sound that necessary.

“I said that you needed to stay put.” Regina replied back, a smirk illuminating her, otherwise, somber expression. “Move, dear.”

Emma complied and stared at the brunette woman who seemed almost a shadow as she approached to the entrance of their hiding place, her figure shuddering as she peeked outside. Emma, even though she knew perfectly well what had caused the shudder, looked as well over Regina’s shoulder, biting down an insult as she saw the pack of black dogs that grunted and sniffed just a few feet of them.

The beasts -because they couldn’t be described as anything else, had necklaces in where an “H” could be distinguished, the grey and black details of the necklace almost getting lost on the black fur that covered the body of the hounds. Hounds that almost passed as normal dogs if it wasn’t for the red on their pupils and the small, yet obvious, copper disc placed at one side of their heads.

“I hate zombies.” Emma muttered to Regina’s ears, her fingers grazing the brunette’s who let out a huff as she moved ever so carefully her right hand in where her gauntlet seemed to be already fully charged.

“The technical name…”

“I don’t think they worry about their technical name, Regina.”

Dragging a long-suffering sigh, Regina turned once again to the dogs, the leader of the pack seeming to almost make contact with her before turning to its second a gruff growl escaping its mouth that the other one answered with a snarl, beads of drool escaping its mouth and falling into the ground. The third and final beast had apparently picked another scent and was already moving further up south the road, something its brothers quickly did as well.

Both Regina and Emma took a step backwards, the blonde letting go the other’s arm. Something she hadn’t realized she had been doing.

“I hate dogs” Emma murmured, leaning her whole body against the small structure Regina had created as a vigilant post. A small place built thanks to the dead angles in the wall’s surface.

“Strange, I have always thought you look like one.”

Narrowing her eyes, the blonde muttered “Ha ha ha” Before pointing outside while Regina dismantled the gauntlet-like weapon in where just the barest amount of heat could be felt on the tips of her fingers. “You think he knows we are already here?

Regina rolled her eyes and handed Emma a small badge in where the silhouette of an apple tree was etched on its surface alongside with the number that made the woman part of the Division.

“I think we need to drop plan A and start with our plan B, dear.”

Emma groaned, picking the badge and following Regina outside, towards the streets in where the putrid smell of the three black dogs still floated. Emma gagged once before she followed the small street upwards, towards the door she had been trying to break through before being caught.

“I should have listened to you.” She murmured while grabbing the bracelet she had, its finishing very similar to the one Regina had, the rhythmic pulses it created growing in intensity, feeding on the small dose of Mix she had put on it before. The energy wasn’t visible but Emma could feel it humming against her skin and necklace and for that she winced as Regina hummed noncommittally. “The guy we found yesterday wasn’t telling the truth.”

“You were the one who saw through his lies, not me.” Regina replied, snapping her fingers; the friction of the copper filaments against each other created a small fireball she carefully maneuvered between her fingers.

“But I was the one who insisted we should try to surprise Hades at his own game… he is a madman trying to defeat the dead and raise animals from it for fuck’s sake… how difficult that could have been?”

They both reached the door Emma had been trying to force, the skeleton key she had been using still dangling from the keyhole. The blonde sighed happily as the smell of rotten flesh was replaced by the smell of saltwater, its taste hovering in the air fainter than in Storybrooke but still strong in the small village they were in.

“I think we both know the answer to that question.” Regina replied, tossing the fireball into the keyhole, effectively melting the cheap metal off its hinges. “Try to follow my steps… and don’t touch anything.”

“As if.” Emma replied under her breath as she followed Regina once the brunette opened the door, the hangar they had found covered in darkness only partially lightened by the pool of grey light that seeped from the same room they stood in front of, eyes set on the darkness beyond the light. Grunts, however, or fangs, never came and so Regina lowered her left hand, the bracelet’s filaments humming as she moved at her left, the sound of her boots against the paved floor faint enough for her to hid on the darkened room.

Emma, however, could still feel the hum of something else with them, something she really couldn’t place growing against her necklace, the bracelet on her hand whirring as it fed even more power to the field it generated around her arm. The jacket felt heavy on her shoulders, dried sweat sticking to her skin as she took a step towards the darkness in front of her, her eyes noticing a shadow that seemed to cover the opposite side of the hangar.

“Regina?” She stage-whispered, pointing at the shadow she now could see more clearly thanks to her eyes getting accustomed to the darkness. The brunette rose a brow and nodded, rotating her wrist so her bracelet recharged again.

Taking a big gulp of air, Emma rose her arm, reading herself for an attack as she showed her badge to the silent darkness in front of them.

“Hades! We know you’re here, show yourself!”

The darkness remained silent and Emma could only perceive Regina moving through the corner of her eyes, the brunette feeling about the closest wall closer to the door they had entered form.

“Close your eyes Emma.”

 Following her instructions, the blonde put her badge in front of her eyes, hissing as a mechanical whirring could be heard as a copper contraction came to light at her left; a generator in where Mix’s batteries waited as a mechanical arm charged them into their receptacle, light growing from faint to strong in seconds, illuminating the hangar the two women quickly discovered as empty. Nothing but boxes upon boxes of the same discs they had seen in the dog’s heads waited for the two of them, goblets and copper lines littering the several tables laid out around a poorly arranged laboratory in where the corpse of a rat was still waiting for its master to appear.

 “This” Emma muttered as she kicked a broken glass whose  sad remains shattered against her boot. “is not going to look good on our report.”


	2. Chapter 1

 

**The** office was dimly illuminated thanks to the brass lamps that stood on top of all the wooden desks that filled the place. The usually loud murmurs and whirring made from both the agents and the ever-present writing machines seemed to be equally dimmed as if everyone in the bullpen-like place was trying jointly to not breathe. From the sturdier door of them all, one in where the oak wood seemed to be just as old as the office was, the echo of three different voices could be heard, floating towards the carefully listening agents as they kept on trying to feign reports and cases were being investigated inside the place instead of admitting their gossip thirst.

Inside the closed office, the voices transformed into two silent women and an irate man. Emma and Regina stood in front of Lieutenant White, the man looking anything but pleased as he turned to read the remaining lines of the report the two women had just given him. The same orange-hued glow that illuminated the outside desks casted shadows on the full to the brim desk of the old man, papers upon papers being stacked around the brass lamp in where the light that came from the glass bulb of the brass structure kept on winking at Emma whose green eyes were only focused on it. a rictus on her face the obvious sign that she was as happy as her boss seemed to be. Other than the papers, an old badge and an equally old-looking pistol rested partially dismantled on top of the desk, the cylinder still dirty from the usual mixture of ink and dust that seemed to float everywhere.

“You are telling me.” Leopold White said, his bushy eyebrows meeting in the middle of his forehead. “That you two not only weren’t able to stop Hades but by the time you arrived to his laboratory all his notes were gone as well?”

Emma and Regina shared a small glance. The two of them had just returned from the small nearby town in where they had followed Hades and his gang of “zombies”; their clothes were still dirty and Emma still sported that hurriedly made dressing Regina had put on the gash she had discovered she had on her shoulder after another run against Hades creations once they had exited the warehouse. Their looks didn’t really spoke about success and only their badges fastened around their hips made them look slightly better than the beggars the two of them know that would be waiting for them just as they leave the bullpen.

Licking her bottom lip, Emma squared her shoulders, readying herself for whatever White would have prepared for her. Taking a step forward on the rug-covered floor, she opened her mouth, the pendant around her neck tingling as the Mix she had there sensed the doses that fed the lamp.

“Sir…”

“It was my fault.” Regina interrupted, raising her chin as both White and Emma turned to look at her, the man eyeing her skeptically while Emma’s lips parted, the blonde unable to say anything as Regina nodded at Leopold’s gaze. “I didn’t learn enough before I shared what I had with Miss Swan, sir. I should have tried to have a better Intel before trying to catch Hades.”

Leopold growled and let the report fall atop a dozen of others, the tower of many other papers trembling perilously at that.

“I should start using a writing machine.” The man mumbled before pinching the bridge of his nose. “But I can’t stand the touch of the copper and those damned machines need to be made of copper in order to work.”

“I heard they are trying to improve the mix of the Dust… Sir.” Emma replied, her voice trailing off as Regina’s strong fingers closed around her forearm, urging her to shut up   
Leopold nodded absentmindedly, eyes still trained on the stack of papers, before he rose his gaze from the reports, the wrinkles around his eyes and the glow on his bald head enough for Emma to try and stifle a small smile that quickly evaporated as the man pointed at the two of them, on his finger a large, stocky ring glinting against the light.

“You two fucked up, I don’t care if you should have listened more before trying to attempt to catch that madman, Mills. You are supposed to be one of our very best as well as Swan here. At least that’s what your report tell me. What you did can possibly set us all back more than two months. This is not going to be good for either of you.”

“I…” Emma opened her mouth, ready to deny Regina’s possible implication on the fuckup that had been hers and hers alone.

“We understand that, sir.” Regina interrupted her, the grip around her forearm even stronger than before. Emma eyed her, amazed that instead of biting Leopold’s head off the brunette seemed to be calmer than before. “We shouldn’t have done what we did. We will take whatever sanction you consider fit for us to take.”

Leopold eyed them both with a glint of doubt in his eye, enough for Emma to feel uncomfortable on her leather boots. Mud and dust still caked her jacket and jeans and as she gulped she realized that it had been a long time since she had last drink something. Swallowing and closing her hand around her pendant, she focused on the small warmth the Mix irradiated from the rigged compartment the small it had.

At her side, Regina hold Leopold’s gaze, her posture frozen as she awaited; she didn’t look as frazzled or as dust-covered as Emma did but tiredness was obvious around her eyes and her left hand, the one in where her bracelet was fastened, hung limp at her side, the copper filaments that run up her fingers glinting every time she breathed, the mechanic contraption waiting for her to snap her fingers.

As seconds passed and the silence stretched, the two of them shared a quick glance; Leopold seemed to be lost on his thoughts and it wasn’t clear if they could already go back to their desks and face the questions of the rest of the office or where supposed to keep standing there.

“Sir?” Emma asked, tilting her head. The use of the epithet made Leopold growl between a tightly closed mouth before he picked one of the reports at his left.

“You are going to investigate this, Swan. A new case that has just dropped in front of our front door so to speak. I want you two on the case, show me that you are not starting to lose your edge.”

Regina took a step forward and grabbed the report with her right hand, the old ring she had around her neck escaping the confines of her blouse as she nodded earnestly, opening the report right away as Emma stood, completely dumbfounded and equally irate.

“Sir, we haven’t lost…”

“Sir.” Regina interrupted her again, this time shooting daggers with her eyes before she turned to eye the man that had started to caress the old-looking pistol, the white accents of the details of the handle peeking between his fingers. “This only speaks about a John Doe found dead at the docks.”

Leopold nodded. “That would be correct.”

Regina sighed as Emma frowned, taking the report from the brunette’s hands and reading the  
  
sparse details of the finding of the body of a young man with his mouth filled with gold ichor that had spilled out in the eroded pavement of the smelly docks of the city.

“Sir.” Emma said, squinting at the details that had been written on the report. “A drug case?”

“Dust is taking over once again.” The man replied, tapping the gun’s surface, the metal clinking beneath his fingers. “We all know how dangerous is to consume it, even the smaller amount.”

Regina tensed at Emma’s side and the blonde cleared her throat before turning back to the old man.

“This man,” Leopold continued, sitting behind his desk, the creaking sound of the wood framing his words. “Was found with twice the usual dose in his system. He was probably dead before his body started to produce the ichor.”

Regina shivered and Emma was close to do something similar herself. The intake of the Dust as it was called one of the two substances that worked as fuel and magic of every item of the Enchanted Forest, was already worrisome enough thanks to the craving it left behind once the human body transformed it into ichor that was later expelled. Having someone with twice the usual dose on their bodies spoke about something far more dangerous; big amounts of the substance without being mixed were on the black market. A gigantic amount.

“How was he able to take so much?” Regina asked out loud. “By the time that amount has been ingested his body should be already failing him.”

“That’s a problem you will need to discover for yourselves.” Leopold replied grumpily. “We need to find who may be selling those doses before word gets spread.”

“We wouldn’t want panic to arise.” Emma replied drily knowing very well that the lieutenant didn’t care at all about the dead and very much about the opinion of the ones above him.

“Of course.” The man replied, waving the two of them off. “I will send word so you two have the forensics before your shift is over. Now, go.”

Emma looked at Regina but the brunette had already turned towards the door, the mechanical handle of it shivering the second she grabbed it with her left, the filaments illuminating as she opened the oak door. Emma, casting one last glance to Leopold, followed her suit, finding herself looking at the suspiciously seeming bored bullpen.

“You would say that they could feign better.” Regina muttered before going directly towards her own desk. Humming, Emma shook her head and leant on the same desk, the report still open on her hands.

“He is an asshole.”

“If you mean White of course he is, he thinks he is the king of the Division.” Regina replied, neatly putting her badge on her desk before starting to dismantle the receptacle that hold the Mix to the bracelet on her wrist.

Emma stared at her in silence as Regina put the receptacle away, the mix of dust and ink titillating as she, carefully, bottled it up. The filaments and bracelet laid on the table, unresponsive –for now-to Regina’s touch. Glancing at her own bracelet the blonde felt her pendant warming ever so slightly, a common occurrence whenever it was close to too many machines. Taking a deep sigh, she eyed the bullpen at her back before looking at Regina again, the brunette already jotting down the details of the John Doe.  
  
“You shouldn’t have said that it was your fault.” Emma finally spoke, green eyes narrowing as Regina looked up, tresses curling just beneath her right ear. “We both know that I shouldn’t have tried to beat Hades at his own game when we had almost zero information of the factory’s layout.”

Regina licked her lips before putting the scrap of paper down just in time for the small receptacle screwed to the opposite side of where the lamp was, coughed a battered copy of what was probably the forensic report Leopold had promised them both. The cage rumbled, the smell of slightly burnt ink and dust filling the air as Regina picked the report before turning to gaze at Emma’s still attentive gaze.

“Are you really asking me to rat you out to that archaic man? That’s not what you’d had asked me four years ago.”

Emma rolled her eyes, leaving the report and crossing her arms in front of her chest. The movement caused several crumbs of the caked mud to fall at Regina’s pristine desk and she froze as Regina eyed her, just the barest of a smile crackling on her lips, while she mouthed a small “Sorry”

“I… I know you would have. As I would have. We really didn’t like each other back them.” They both smirked; overstatement of the century.

“But today that’s not the case, I could have calmed him down, I feel bad that you are stuck with this case and with me because I was an idiot.”

Regina hummed, opening the dossier and starting to read the report with growing dark circles around her eyes.

“Even if I can say that you are an idiot, dear…” She answered, sucking on her teeth as she reached the end of the dispassionate explanation of how the John Doe had been found curled up, clutching his stomach and with an expression often found on the users of the dust, “We both would’ve end up in this case. It sounds like one of those that White doesn’t want to think too much about because, otherwise, they would break the idea he had chosen to see about how Storybrooke is like.”

Emma grumbled a “yes” knowing very well that Regina was mostly right; White would’ve ended up giving them that case so he could say to the authorities he had given the case to two of his best agents. Whether they would’ve caught Hades or not. Tilting her head, she extracted the forensics report from Regina’s hands who sighed deeply before reclining on her chair, silently staring at the blonde.

“Still,” Emma added, reading the details of the autopsy. “He is an asshole, he shouldn’t…” “I’ve been clean for more time than even you have known me, Emma, this is nothing.”  
The two women stared at each other, Emma’s posture changing quickly as she eyed into Regina’s dark eyes. Stepping aside and kneeling next to the brunette’s chair she crocked her head as Regina hold on her gaze.

“Liar.” Emma finally whispered. Eliciting a small sigh from the older woman.

“I’m not. I will be fine.”

Shaking her head, Emma straightened up and turned towards her own desk, carrying the forensics report with her.  
  
“Emma?”

The blonde turned, finding Regina’s stare. The brunette had picked up her badge and seemed deeply interested on it

“Will you come to dinner tonight?”

Emma smirked; the two of them had been sharing dinners ever since Regina had decided that she hasn’t been sent there in order to take up her place.

“I will be there, want me to carry something?”

“Nothing much, Henry will probably be happy to see you there.”

“I’m sure he will ask me about the case to no end…”

“You know my son.”

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 2

 

The sound of the rain falling against the pavement of the outskirts of Storybrooke hid the ragged breaths of the lanky figure that tried to outrun one of the many shadows that seemed to hover at both sides of the road dimly illuminated by the copper light bulbs.

Ashley muffled a scream as she fell, her ragged clothes muddling as she fell into one of the many poodles that covered the trail, the lamp she was closed to blinking once before dying, its reserve of ink and dust failing it. Ashley shot a scared glance to the bulb, commanding it to illuminate again as the first droplets of ichor started to slide down her face. The bulb followed her desires.

With shaky fingers, she raised her hand towards her cheek, narrowing her eyes as the view of the first droplet of ichor against her skin came into view.

“No…” She whispered as she looked at her back, the sound of the rain deafening anything else but her steps on the storm. Swallowing the sweet taste of the ichor, she felt her sight beginning to swim, her whole body heating up as it started to generate more ichor, short rivulets beginning to escape the corners of her mouth and eyes.

Shadowed by the cloak of the trees a figure eyed the whole scene while approaching the girl, a hum rumbling on its chest as the girl elevated her hands again towards the bulb, eyes closed, as a fog enveloped her, leaving nothing but her footprints behind as it disappeared. The shadow swallowed down a scream.

 

* * *

 

  
Regina closed the drawer that held her supply of Mix and sighed inwardly as she saw the oven turning back to life. She should have checked the levels of the mix before trying to cook and she would have usually do just that but as she turned towards the door of the kitchen through Henry’s steps started to enter, she could do anything but admit that ever since she had seen the report her mind had been elsewhere.

Emma, she admitted to herself, had been right; she had lied and White was a little puny man that deserved a fireball right up…

“Mom!” Henry’s voice had started to change, turning deeper and breaking at the most unexpected moments. The teen found it horrible but it never failed to make Regina smile and this time wasn’t an exception as she broke into a grin.

Both mother and son stared at each other for a fraction of a second before the boy lunged forwards, hugging Regina tightly and resting his temple against hers. Something that had turned easier ever since his last growth spurt.

“I missed you.” Declared the boy before taking a step backwards, his fingers stained with drying ink. At Regina’s worried glance he hid them away behind his back, casting an apologetic look towards the woman. “I was trying to make the quill Emma gave me to work but…”

“She is coming tonight.” Regina replied, smiling warmly at him. She had missed him as well and had despised the fact that thanks to the report they had needed to give to Leopold she hadn’t been at home back when he had returned from school. “Perhaps you can ask her, see if there’s something you should be doing.”

Henry nodded and jumped, into the kitchen’s counter. A trait he had acquired from Emma and  
  
one Regina would have preferred for him not to. “Great! How was everything? Did you manage to catch that mad inventor?”

Regina felt her smile turning brittle at the memory of the empty laboratory and hours upon hours of investigation turned into dust but she cleared her throat, unwilling for that to be sawn by the boy.

“Everything…” She started, turning towards the oven when it dinged. “was more difficult than what we had thought it would. Leopold has given us a new case.”

“So, you two will be discussing it later?”

Regina narrowed her eyes at the innocent look Henry shot in her way.

“You would think” She drawled “That a son of mine would lie better. Or just try to not snoop on me.”

Henry snorted but held his hands up, admitting defeat.

“I just wanted to know, that’s all.”

Regina grabbed plates and glasses and pointed them to the boy who jumped off the counter and gingerly grabbed them.

“How was school?” She asked over her shoulder as he turned towards the door.

“We had that History exam I told you, remember?”

Regina hummed, closing her eyes. True.

“How was it?”

Henry returned and smiled at her, shrugging as Regina pointedly eyed his ink-stained fingers.

“I think I did it okay… I didn’t remember the date when the Authors disappeared though but I linked that to the disappearance of magic so I think I got it covered.”

“Did you get asked on the Dust?” Regina asked, her mind going back to the young John Doe.

Henry frowned but nodded, opening the faucet and cleaning his hands on it.

“Yeah, of course, the remains of what we have of magic. That and the ink of course, thanks to that we can use machines. Why?”

Regina blinked, snapping out of the feeling of uneasiness she had been feeling on the back of her throat ever since she had returned home.

“Just thinking outloud dear… And you should have remembered the date, you told me everything last week.”

“I just got distracted… when is Emma going to arrive?”

  

* * *

 

  
The mansion stood just in the middle of the street that did its job as working as a line between the richer quarters and the middle class’ and as Emma eyed the entrance of the place, generously bathed in the light of perfectly oiled lamps, she swallowed. She always had felt apprehension near  
  
the mansion, feeling that she truly didn’t belong there. The thought, deeply embedded on her psyche, had started to ease off but the feeling of uneasiness pervaded and so she stood for a couple more seconds in front of the place, hands on her pockets and still feeling as it mud covered her now pristine leather jacket. She still carried the badge with her, albeit hidden, and for a second she caressed the polished surface before knocking on the door three times.

The answer was almost immediate and so a boy was soon opening the door with the echo of Regina’s voice trailing behind. “I’m going to start to get worried that you like her more than me.”

“That would never happen.” Emma replied to the scream, smiling at the kid and winking at him. “You’re the one capable of feeding him something more than just grilled cheese.”

“That I do.” Regina answered back, exiting the kitchen and holding Emma’s smile with one of her own.

At first these interactions had been difficult, tainted by the fact that four years ago, Henry had discovered that he had been adopted. Fear had mostly darkened the well-meaning jokes the two of them tried to get through the boy’s sulking feelings through those times. Now, however, the tension had disappeared and as the three of them went to the living room Emma finally felt at ease.

“So… what we have for dinner?” She asked, grinning cheekily.

“Definitely not grilled cheese.” Regina replied, smirking as Emma feigned to be wounded by her words. Henry, who had already taken his seat, rolled his eyes at them both before looking at Emma, rubbing his left hand absentmindedly in where several splotches of black ink still stained his fingers.

“How was Hades?” He asked as the two adults entered on his field vision again. Emma eyed Regina, arching both browns to the question and nodding as the brunette shook her head ever so slightly.

“It could have been better.” She finally answered, sitting on the seat she usually took and smiling at Henry as the boy glanced at her. “Obviously because of me, your mother was…”

“Don’t start.” Regina replied, narrowing her eyes at the blonde before glancing at Henry. “As I’ve just told you everything turned out to be more complicated than we had thought; it wasn’t Emma’s fault.”

The blonde grumbled a quick “fine” before jumping to the smell of lasagna, eyes twinkling as she eyed Regina and muttered a quick “thank you” that made the brunette smile. It was in quiet nights like this the ones where she felt more at ease with the blonde. Something, she quickly thought, would probably never actually tell to the blonde herself. Swallowing and giving Henry his first she laughed as Emma wolfed down her own plate.

  

* * *

 

  
Ashley could feel the cold starting to seep through her bones, her sight turning blurrier as the dust inside of her consolidated, creating connections on her brain that shouldn’t be there. The smoke had carried her all the way to the northern side of the city, a place she had heard about but had never truly visited and if it hadn’t been for the characteristic brass lamps with the city’s symbol engraved on their base she would have thought that the Dust had carried her further away.

Coughing, she glanced at her back, at the empty streets flanked at both sides with well-lighted houses. The gold ichor hadn’t stopped its fall and as she moved droplets of the substance kept on  
  
falling to the road, leaving a trail she glanced at, nauseous.

She didn’t have a lot of time, she knew that, she had seen others in similar situations but never this strong; beggars that drank the smallest amount of unadulterated dust found deep on the mines that were scattered around the whole forest and who were able, for a short amount of time, to reconnect with the fallen magic, the very one that was constricted, they used to say, by the machines they had created in order to control it. It deserved to be free, they said, and by taking the dust they were able to see the world as the Authors had once been.

Once you took a sip, however, your soul was lost to that dream and between the drug being persecuted and being lethal, fewer and fewer actually got away with it. There was always someone, though, that was stupid enough to consume it to the point in where the amount of energy the drug needed to keep the brain from functioning started to turn every liquid into ichor. That, Ashley thought, was the state from who no one returned.

Frantically, she briefly wondered if she could ask for help in the nearby houses but she quickly abandoned the idea; no one would help a stranger who was obviously about to die. Sobbing, she closed her eyes, feeling the tendrils of magic, the ones that had once run freely but she could now see coiled around the cogs of every lamppost, writing in gold their will to freedom.

She collapsed, she needed to ask for help, a part of her brain shouted, tell someone, tell anyone….

At the end, however, it was already too late.

 

* * *

 

 

“You really thought that you needed to explain to him what the exams are to enter in the Division?” Regina asked as she closed the door of her office with a huff. Upstairs the sound of Henry’s shuffling around got muffled by the wooden door but Regina knew her son enough to know that they boy wasn’t planning on sleeping any time soon.

“He wants to enter.” Emma answered, shrugging and going to Regina’s cider, pouring two fingers of the liquid into a tumbler and offering it to Regina as the brunette turned to look at her. “Is better if he goes knowing what’s going to encounter. Wouldn’t you have preferred that?”

“That’s not the point.” Regina replied, snatching the tumbler away and taking a seat in the small couch that dominated the center of the room. In the far end of the place a desk neatly kept was illuminated by the golden light, on its surface Regina’s badge staring back at the two of them as Emma sat in front of her, elbows on her knees.

They knew what the point was; Regina didn’t want for Henry to have the kind of life she had and Emma’s attempts on easing the gruesome parts of their job whenever Henry asked about it got on her nerves. The boy, however, had been enamored with the idea of working for the team that ensured everything worked as it was supposed to do since he had been a toddler. Regina could remember him looking at her –by then- still new badge with shiny eyes and shaky fingers, asking Regina how had been her day back when all she did was take care of minor cases with several of the high-socialite of Storybrooke, the Mills surname still holding an echo than through the following years it had started to fade away. He, however, hadn’t started to talk about actually becoming part of the force until Emma arrived.

Emma, the newbie at Storybrooke’s office, the girl with a troubled past and a surname that had the same heat hers hold. Emma, the one who had found Henry when he had tried to escape the house, the information of him being adopted too strong, too brusque. Regina had been resentful of Emma at first, of this stranger that was paired up to her without any kind of explanation after Graham’s  
  
retirement. Resentful, at the end, of this blonde who kept on trying to make her smile and be there, no matter what. Until she, of course, had fallen for the blonde.

“I can talk to him if you want.” Emma said, waking Regina up from her revering. “Tell him something about staying in school.”

“He will probably answer that he is fed up with it.” Regina replied, sighing before taking a sip of her drink. “He is coming more and more often from there telling me that he feels trapped there.”

“I understand the feeling.” Emma muttered under her breath. Shrugging when Regina eyed her worriedly. “Sorry, too deep?”

Regina sighed and shook her head, pointing at desk in where the badge glinted at them, defiantly. “Is this new case. White is many things but stupid is not one of them.”

“I don’t know, he seems very stupid to me.” Emma answered beneath her breath, eliciting a small chuckle from Regina as she perked up. “Have any ideas of where we should start? I think this is the kind of case Leopold would want us to finish as quickly as possible.”

Regina nodded, taking another sip from her glass before going towards the table. Pressing a panel, a small whirring was heard and a drawer opened at the right corner of the desk.

“He will but I think that this is more complicated than just a growth of the usual black market for the dust. Did you finish reading the report?”

Emma shook her head and picked the copy Regina was offering her. “I didn’t have the time. Why? Is this about what you said back at White’s?”

“Drug dealers are not stupid, Emma, they only offer a dose big enough to make their clientele wanting more. This boy though? His body reacted as if he had drunk ten times the usual doses.”

Leafing through the report Emma glanced at Regina, noticing the dark circles and posture that spoke of the tension the other woman was probably feeling.

“If its drunk too many times…” She started, carefully but Regina interrupted her, sitting on her previous spot as she did so, hands intertwined and back completely straight.

“It lowers the natural defenses we have and the result is the same. I know, I remember.”

Emma let her hands fall lax between her legs, looking sympathetically to the brunette who pinched the bridge of her nose before starting again.

“Look at him, Emma, he is nothing but a child. Too young to have started with Dust, definitely too young to have started to drink the amount necessary to reach this state. The samples of his blood came packed with the drug. No one with that amount on their body is able to drink so much before their body starts to collapse.”

“So… he was forced to take it?”

“At the very least he wasn’t conscious when the last few doses were administered.”

Emma bit her thumb’s nail, reading the details of the boy’s body. A John Doe, it wasn’t a mystery where he was from though; the almost torn to pieces shirt and jeans that their color had faded so much they couldn’t be called blue anymore but some short of greyish in where splotches of blue signaled him as a worker on the docks. Everything on him seemed to be faded and Emma looked at his description imagining very well the same feeling of helplessness he could very well had felt.  
  
“For someone to have that much they should have needed to buy it first to someone. We can ask around, see if anyone has bought big amounts of Dust even with those unspoken rules. If there is someone we can work from there.”

Regina shot the blonde a grateful look; she had known Emma would trust her instincts being her the one who usually followed her gut whenever a complicated case was involved. Regina’s link to the dust, however, made everything feebler and as she finished her drink she finally felt at ease as her clinical mind began unfolding a course of action.

“We could go to the docks first. Ask around; find who the people that found him were.”

“They won’t tell you who they are. You know the docks, everyone minds their own business… and if they don’t they won’t talk with us, Divisioners.”

The use of the slang word for them floated in the air and still seemed to hover as Regina opened her mouth, ready to consider any other option. Her voice, however, was quickly drown by the heavy knocking and a feminine voice calling for Regina’s name.

“Regina! I’m Ruby, open the damn door!”

The two women eyed each other before opening the door of the studio’s door, the knocking becoming louder as they approached the main door of the mansion. Regina could hear Henry opening his own door upstairs, obviously intending to listen what was happening. Straightening her clothes, she put her hand on top of the handle, nodding imperceptibly at Emma who was already pressing the inner side of her own bracelet, a soft click floating towards her ears.

When they finally opened the door, Ruby Lucas looked at them before sighing exasperatedly, her enhanced glasses that let her see better during nighttime glistening against Regina’s doorframe. She was wearing her badge prominently, the plaque dangling from her chest and tresses of her half-dyed hair shone red as she shook her head.

“Finally. I was starting to think that you were too busy to open, Regina. See I wasn’t wrong.”

Shooting an annoyed glance to the lanky brunette, Regina crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes as Ruby winked at her.

“There was nothing going on, Miss Lucas, may I ask you why are you knocking on my house at such hours?”

Ruby eyed Emma quickly who merely nodded, smiling slightly at Regina’s tone but saying nothing that would dismiss the rumor she was sure that were going to end up on the bullpen by tomorrow morning. It wasn’t that they hadn’t been made fun of before after all. Leroy seemed just as interested on being sure that she hadn’t ended up with a “Mills” than Ruby appeared to be. Albeit the blonde suspected Ruby’s reasons were more about a possible bet than the fact of Regina’s mother being a madwoman focused on using every being at her disposal; her daughter included.

“There’s been a murder. Young girl, a couple of blocks from here. That’s why I got permission from White to alert you. You’re with that case, right? The one of the boy from the docks.”

Emma could almost feel Regina getting paler at her side and so she took a step forward, sharing a quick glance with Regina who merely sidestepped, walking back inside and already calling for Henry who came down the stairs just as Regina was entering inside her office.  
  
“Were you on patrol?” Emma asked to Ruby, trying to feign she wasn’t mentally counting backwards, the trick she knew Regina used to do whenever too many stressors came into her way.

Ruby nodded earnestly, narrowing her eyes as the glasses on her forehead glowed, reflecting the light. “But don’t worry.” She said salaciously. “I won’t tell on you, how you were with her majesty herself hours before the two of you arrived from a mission outside the city.”

“Rubes…”

Emma’s warning, however, got lost as Regina reappeared at their side, bracelet already on place and copper filaments fastened on her fingers, the contraption protesting on Emma’s ears as Regina brushed against her right arm in where her bracelet also was. She looked frazzled, worried as Henry’s earnest “Take care!” echoed at their backs. By the time Emma turned, however, the boy was already gone.

“Lucas.” Regina started, her tresses falling around her eyes that glowed as she eyed the taller brunette as if she was the one hovering her and not around. “How does it look?”

Ruby easy demeanor changed right before their eyes and for a second Emma saw the girl Ruby didn’t let many to see, the one who had come to the city trying to make something of herself.

“Bad, Regina. Pretty bad.”

 

 


	4. Chapter 3

Ruby was right, it was pretty bad, so bad the sight of the young girl -20 at most, on top of the metallic table was enough for Emma to wish for not having eaten seconds at Regina’s. The brunette’s own stoic yet pale face spoke volumes as well at Emma’s side.

From eyes, nose and ears gold ichor had already solidified, her expression distorted as her body seemed completely covered in the same liquid that wrote lines following the trace of her veins up her arms and neck until no even her clothes were free from it. Shuddering at the sight, Emma glanced at Regina, the brunette nodding imperceptivity at her.

That, however, looking at her in the medical examiner’s room, was easier, much easier, than picking the body up as quick as possible as they worked against the clock, trying to fight the rumor of a lost girl obviously very far from her own area lying in the middle of one of the busiest streets of the rich part of Storybrooke; the place in where men and women seemed to be gifted with obscene amounts of gold just by existing.

Obviously, the sight of a dead girl would be considered a scandal. The hypocrisy of them all made Emma blood boil but she had kept herself as professional as possible as they started trying to get any clue about the possibility that the body of this girl could be related with the other one they were already investigating. The similarities were fairly obvious; they had been found in a very similar way, presenting the same signs. The differences, however, were what irked them the most.

Who, for example, was the girl? Had she known who was their John Doe? Were the two of them related in any way that could help them to find who could have sell the doses necessary to do something like this?

Growling, they had picked the body and any other clue they could find almost an hour after arriving, when the first carriages came back to their respective houses from long parties that would end up appearing on the newspapers, echoes of laughter and the scent of far too expensive perfume clouding the, until then, limpid air. “Royalty” had already arrived and it was their turn to start asking around.

But first, of course, came the dreaded autopsy, the one they were now attending to, eyes trained on every single clue they thought they could be helpful to the investigation. That, however, had proven to be difficult since nothing but “overdose” seemed to come from the first autopsy results.

If this should have been their first murder Emma would already have declared the whole thing off. However, there were signs, more than several, that spoke of something different; once the examiner started to get rid of the ichor- which took her several minutes since the substance was almost as thick as caramel and just as hard to get out once solidified, the blacks and purples of bruises began to appear. The girl, contrary to their John Doe, had fought back against whatever had happened to her and as Regina first and Emma second moved closer to the table, trying to see anything else, the shadow of digits in the forms of bruises started to be seen around the upper arms, as if someone had tried to grab the girl closer.

At Emma’s side, Regina narrowed her eyes, crossing her arms as she looked at the bruises and to the way the examiner moved the flaccid flesh around as more and more ichor left the girl’s body. Restless, the brunette swallowed thickly, the sour smell of the dried ichor cutting through the air, speaking to her of the moments she had once spent with the feeling of magic caressing her subconscious, prickling through her body as it spoke of another kind of world destroyed forever ago.

“What do you think?”  
  
The question woke her up from her reverie and she found herself staring back at Emma as the blonde glanced at her with barely hidden concern. Regina hummed and shook her head minutely, an almost hidden sign of her to be alright.

She wondered yet again if Leopold hadn’t given them this case in order to punish them. Letting out a shuddering breath she shook her head yet again with her eyes closed this time; they didn’t have the time to think about it, they had a murder to investigate.

Instead of answering to Emma’s question, Regina directed her gaze to the medical examiner, smiling inwardly at the sudden nervousness of the specialist. The mechanical glasses mounted atop her head almost looked seemed to be shivering as she nodded earnestly once she realized that she was being watched. The intricate design of glass and metal alongside with the receptacle for the Mix moved wildly through her auburn tresses and there was a second Regina almost felt like telling her to breathe.

Nevertheless, the examiner finally pointed at where the major bruise could be seen peeking through the veins of ichor she still needed to clean from the skin. The flesh around the bruise had a sickly yellowish color the examiner prodded expertly before clearing her throat.

“This were done in the same timeframe than we suspect she died. Perhaps an hour before. The others seem to have been done a day or two ago.”

“Signs of rape?” Emma began to ask after a few tense seconds in where it became clear that Regina didn’t think on asking. The medical examiner shook her head just as quickly, the glasses jingling and clicking yet again as they caught the orange gleam of the light that illuminated the room the three of them and the girl were in.

“Nothing. We are still clearing her skin from the ichor so any study done won’t be completely reliable until we don’t have any kind of interference but we can safely say that she wasn’t.”

Emma nodded her head and glanced at Regina as the voice of the medical examiner trailed off. The brunette was playing with her gauntlet, the copper lines that linked her bracelet to the tips of her fingers gleaming between her fingers as she caressed them incessantly; a nervous tic.

“It seems that your theory of being forced to eat the Dust is closer to the truth than we thought it was.”

The examiner pretended to busy herself as Regina nodded slowly, eyes trained onto the dead girl’s face. Once she spoke, she did so with an almost broken tone, as if her mind was still very far away.

“The question is to discover why.” Turning towards the examiner, Regina pointed towards the girl, the bracelet letting out a quiet yet clear sound of protest as it became closer to the remaining ichor that tinted the girl’s face. “Can you run by the needed orders so we can check if the girl is in the system? After you’ve finished the examination of the body, of course.”

After that, and without waiting for her to answer, Regina turned and left the dimly lighted room, the echo of her footsteps coloring Emma’s sigh as she, too, left the room with a barely muttered excuse done above her shoulder to the blinking owlishly examiner.

Regina was waiting her outside, eyes narrowed as she absentmindedly played with the pendant she wore around her neck. The corridor was almost empty due to the late -or perhaps early- hour and as Emma approached her the blonde could see she was shivering ever so slightly.

Glancing around them, the blonde took care on being sure that no one could see them before  
  
caressing Regina’s arm, the gesture being met with Regina’s warning look before the two of them took a step back.

“I can talk with White in a few hours, ask him if we can be left out of the case.” Emma said softly to only be cut short by Regina’s “no”

“He will use it against us, especially after what happened with Hades.” The brunette elaborated as she began to walk to the other side of the corridor in where the long stairs towards the bullpen awaited them. “We need to discover what’s happening with those kids… and if we are going to encounter more end it before it jumps to the newspapers.”

“I doubt this will worry the high-socialite of Storybrooke.” Emma answered back as she followed Regina, a small yawn tensing the muscles around her mouth. She definetely needed some coffee.

Regina smiled briefly at the yawn but hummed gravely at the blonde’s comment. It was true, of course, a couple of nobodies wouldn’t alter the nobles that did their bidding with the money the extraction of the dust at Storybrooke’s mines brought with it. The upturn of the Dust, however, was something that could caught the interest of them as well. And that was something she didn’t want to face. Emma followed her, knowing very well Regina didn’t plan on answering her.

As they came back to the almost empty bullpen in where nothing but two officials filled the empty, dust caked space, Regina went directly towards her desk and began reading the small notes she had jotted down as Ruby had directed them to the body. A few feet behind her Emma rubbed her eyes furiously, her bracelet glowing silver on the slowly raising light that began to fill the place.

“I think we need to ask around as we talked.” She spoke, leaning on the desk’s edge. “See if we can find the one who sold the Dust and if they remember how was like the one they sold to.”

Regina nodded absentmindedly before looking back to Emma, her right hand hovering over her notes. “You think we will manage to make them talk to us?”

Emma shrugged, arms crossed over her chest. She wasn’t a fool; drug dealers, or almost no one from the part of the town they were talking to enter, didn’t talk with the Division. At all. With, perhaps, one notable exception, one she didn’t plan on using unless she was forced to. They, however, didn’t have anything else to start.

“If we go right now by breakfast we will know if we need to try something else.” She answered, her aloof expression not fooling Regina who glanced at her with a small yet amused exasperate smirk curving her lips.

“You are…”

She, however, was cut short by the jarring of Regina’s mailbox. Curiously, the two of them glanced at the single sheet of paper the machine had produced in where the numbers that signaled it as coming from forensics made them frown.

What was written on the page, however, made them pause.

Ashley Boyd. The page said, a blurry picture that resembled the girl downstairs displayed next to that name. Behind it a small list of several small theft cases was written down alongside with two lines in where it was written how the girl had had a difficult relationship with her stepmother and stepsisters.

“Seems that we know who our Jane Doe is.” Regina said sadly, picking the paper and writing down the girl’s name.  
  
Emma sighed and did the same, looking at the time displayed beneath the picture it had been taken several years ago, since, even as blurry as it was, the Ashley displayed there didn’t seem to be more than 18 and the girl downstairs looked slightly older.

“What happened to you?”

 

* * *

 

  
Both had been right, of course. By the time, they had arrived to the docks the grey light of morning had already started to turn golden and the wooden footbridges that linked one dock’s end to the others were already packed to the brim with sailors and workers alike that seemed to be anything but interested on answering the questions of two Divisioners. It didn’t matter how sweetly or forcefully both Emma and Regina tried to make them talk; the description and name of both the John Doe and Ashley were met with grunts, several shrugs or utter silence as the bustling action around them kept on growing.

If their badges were enough to make the ones at the docks glance at them distrustingly, the glint of their bracelets and occasionally Emma’s pendant were the final straw. As one short, stocky man with short salt-peppered beard told them; the docks were ruled outside their “pretty, little laws” and no Divisioners were welcomed there. Tired and angry after tense hours it was Emma the one who finally turned towards Regina and admitted defeat.

“Maybe we need to see if he knows something.” She said while moving away from a few children, not older than ten that carried with them what seemed to be parts of a machine, grease staining their clothes.

Regina pursed her lips for a moment before nodding once. Emm cracked the joints of her fingers.

“I hate this”. She muttered. They, however, didn’t have any more options and they both knew it.

And if they knew him well, Rupert Gold probably knew it already as well.


	5. Chapter 4

 

Gold’s shop rose in one small street almost an hour away from the docks. Bathed in the light of midmorning, the dusty sign that presented the place as one small pawnshop glimmered on the sunrays. The interior, however, with its walls completely covered with wood panels, spoke of a kind of richness a small dealer shouldn’t have.

A coward, Gold had been known for many years for being what he liked to call himself; The dealer of deals. There was nothing he couldn’t provide once the payment was done. Payment that wasn’t mere money most of the times and so the Division had tried to end him more than once only to see their efforts frustrated by the power the old man seemed to have.

Hater of weapons, he rarely used one and Emma would need to count with the fingers of one hand when she had seen him using anything more than his tongue and wits. His power, however, wasn’t on any blade but his cruelty and the information he always managed to own. Both Regina and she had been forced to ask for a favor almost four years ago, for one of their first cases, and even though they didn’t trust him he had proven himself worthy and useful alongside with awfully cocky. It was precisely his smirk the first thing they found once the dinging at their back died down alongside with the sound of the door closing and Gold turned towards them, one hand on his cane and the other one hidden behind his back.

“Miss Mills, Miss Swan, what a pleasure to see you two today.”

Emma could feel Regina stiffening at her side and so she swallowed, doing the same out of reflex. It didn’t matter at which hour one presented at Gold’s shop; the man always seemed to be there and the knowing look he had was enough to tell her he already knew why they were there. Tightening her jaw, she moved closer to the shop’s counter, away from the contraptions that made its way down from the ceiling, mobiles created out of glass and copper slowly spinning without the aid of any kind of breeze. Regina stayed slightly behind, the whirring of her bracelet clinking unnaturally loud as Emma could feel her pendant getting warmer around Gold’s inventions.

“Cut the crap.” She finally said, leaning her body on the counter, narrowing her eyes at the man’s satisfied smirk. “You know why we are here.”

Truthfully, Gold rarely answered to intimidation any more than the ones that waited at the deck, lips tightly sealed, unwilling to tell them what had happened with the man and the woman. The way the old man carried himself, however, was enough for Emma to want to punch him on the mouth.

Predictably, the man’s face twisted and feigned confusion.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Miss Swan.”

Emma could feel the warmth on her pendant getting stronger the longer she stayed up so close the man. The place reeked from machinery, probably half of it not being declared and so she twisted her own hand, the simpler lines of her bracelet gleaming into the light.

It was Regina, her right brow arched into an impossible arc, what stopped Emma in the last second, her warm hand stopping for a millisecond on the blonde’s back before she turned her eyes to Rumple, one hand atop the counter as she did so.

“The Dust, Gold. Someone is either smuggling bigger quantities in the market or someone is doing something you probably don’t want on your territory.”  
  
The voice of the brunette made the man pause for a moment, apparently battling on either telling them the truth or remaining silent. Around them Emma could see the mobiles twirling from the corner of her eyes, each one with a more fantastic form than the previous one; creature’s extinct centuries ago – unicorns, ogres- staring at the thee of them from its glassed forms. At the end, a sigh escaped Gold’s lips and he placed both of his hands atop his cane, a calculated movement Emma followed with her gaze, not trusting the man.

Man whose voice echoed on the walls of the shop, his smooth accented voice ricocheting against the glass and copper.

“Dust?” Have you thought on asking the Blue Fairy for it? For what I know she is the one dealing with it.”

Emma groaned. The Blue Fairy -or Reul Ghorm- was the CEO of the one and only factory that worked with the pure Dust until it transformed into the mixture that would later be sold as the Mix on that part of the world. The Fairies, called like that due to the old days in where it was registered that only them were able to canalize the dust as a source of magic, were a tight group in where many contracts had been signed and almost a nun-like policy of not saying anything out of what had been previously discussed, prevailed. Reul, though, as strange as she was, was a public figure. It was obvious that Gold was trying to make them lose time.

“If you are so sure of that I’m sure you would let us register the back of your shop then. How much Dust you think we are going to see tightly packed and already prepared to be sold in there?”

Gold’s smirk widened just a fraction. For him everything was a chess game. One Emma had long ago refused to even try to understand. He had tried to help Cora Mills back when the woman had tried to use her deranged ideas of a bigger connection with magic years ago. For some reason, Emma didn’t truly know, he had ended up free despite the many clues of his implication scattered on the files she had read over the years about that case. It was precisely that, his connection with Cora, what made Regina much easier to read him than her. Every time they were forced to make a deal with him she ended up having a headache and this time it didn’t seem that it was going to end any differently.

After some tense moments, Gold began to talk, same smirk but a serious gleam on his eyes.

“There’s been someone, a stranger, escaping the lips of some of my… associates for a few weeks now.”

Regina nodded at Emma’s side, her face somber as she did so.

“I don’t really have that much of information.” Gold continued, a sigh telling them that that on itself was something that bothered him. Knowledge was power after all “He calls himself an “Author” As deranged as that may seem I’ve recently… felt a shift into the market.”

And just like this the smirk was back.

“Something any good entrepreneur would be able to know, I’m sure.”

Regina shared a glance with Emma. Authors were extinct. They had been like that ever since magic had started to ebb away from them. The powerful beings able to create and kill with the aid of their ink were an important part of their story but something told to children in order to explain how magic worked in the old days. The only thing that had survived those times was the ink’s receipt that was currently used as a way to spark the natural properties of the dust so it could be used as a machine’s fuel.  
  
Turning again to the man the brunette tapped her fingers against the wooden surface of the counter, the copper filaments glowing as she did so. “What kind of shift?”

Gold narrowed her eyes just as a young woman entered on the shop, the sound of the jingling bell breaking the tense atmosphere of room. Her haunted eyes fell on Emma and Regina’s badges and she was about to turn and leave the shop when Gold intervened by raising one hand, the many rings he owned mirroring the gleam Regina’s copper had just done.

“No, dearie, don’t you worry. This other transaction was already about to end. Am I right, officers?”

Emma wanted to tell him that he was going to the bullpen with them, stripe him down of his cockiness while doing so. She knew, however, that that wasn’t possible. Gold rarely said something incriminatory enough to keep him in prison for very long. The kind of paperwork they would need to file would probably be more than the actual amount of time he would spend at the Division’s facilities. Shaking her head, she followed Regina’s trail once the brunette smiled tightly at Gold before storming out of the shop.

“Good morning.” She heard the newcomer almost whispering in a tremulous whisper as she walked past her.

She definetely needed a coffee.

 

* * *

 

  
“I would have loved to kick his ass, Regina, you know that.”

Regina smiled at Emma’s antics as the blonde finished her breakfast at Granny’s. After their talk with Gold there were very little they could do, not until having a proper information from forensics at least. Ashley didn’t have any known place to stay as strangled from her stepmother as she was and so they were very much in the same place they had started. With one single difference, though; the Author.

Despite Emma’s distrust -one she also shared- Gold was many things but not an outright liar. He wouldn’t have shared that piece of information if he wasn’t sure of it. Not after being remembered that she could get his license and destroy it because, despite his more shadowy business, he was a good informant. Which led her to the question of; who was that author? Were they really behind all of what was happening?

Taking a sip of her quickly cooling coffee and still being grateful for Granny herself to have let her contact with Henry as soon as they had entered on the dinner and therefore be sure the boy was alright and already about to head to school, she thought again on what they already knew.

It was obvious that if Gold was saying the truth -and they didn’t have any reasons to suspect he wasn’t- the deranged calling himself an Author was behind the abnormal amounts of Dust. How, however, the victims had taken so many dust in one single take? Her idea of them being force-fed echoed on the back of her brain. It would be a brutal way to die her mind provided. Perhaps they could try to investigate if the two victims shared some kind of connection, one that could make them eligible for a killer. Problem was that without almost no information from the first victim it was probably almost impossible to start somewhere.

“Regina? Got lost in there?”

Emma’s affectionate smile woke Regina from her reverie and the brunette found herself smiling back at the younger woman as she took another sip of her coffee. Trying not to stare for too long  
  
the brunette shook her head quickly before clearing her throat, Emma’s gaze on her lips doing next to nothing to help.

“I was just thinking on what Gold said.” She finally answered, her index finger caressing incessantly the cup’s edge. Emma’s noncommittal hum was enough for her to sigh; the blonde always thought that she needed to openly distrust the man due to his history with her own mother. A woman both Regina and Emma hated for several different reasons that at the end could be condensed to one single thing: Loss. For Regina, it had been the loss of her infancy. For Emma… it had been slightly more complicated than that and the memory of some of the stories Emma had told her after reading and re reading Cora’s case; her experiments in order to achieve a type of magic casters in a world in where magic wasn’t that powerful anymore, were chilling enough to freeze hell twice over. Daughter of some of those who had fell onto Cora’s clutches, Emma’s surname was as cursed as hers. It was perhaps of this that whenever they were in front of Gold, as little as his part on all of that had been, Emma didn’t hear anything else but her own loss. A trait that have made Regina be sure at first that she was going to end up killed and which she had learnt to rely on as time had passed.

“As much as I hate to say it, he wasn’t lying.” Emma replied with a sigh, her lips slightly stained from the chocolate-filling of her doughnut. Regina chuckled to herself before pointing at it, a light blush covering Emma’s skin before she cleaned herself.

“I suspected as much.” Regina added once the blonde’s lips were clean. Glancing at them, she bent over the table before moving slightly away, gathering her thoughts. “What do you think we should do?”

“We can always try to do what he suggested.” Emma muttered, clearly not happy with being forced to take Gold’s sneaky comment. “We all know the Fairies know much more than they say they do. I don’t believe that big amounts of unprocessed Dust could end up on the streets with them not noticing it. The mines almost only provide for them.”

“Maybe we can get ahold of the delivery orders from the mines.” Regina thought outload, a plan already forming on her mind. “If we notice that the numbers have been embellished we could get a little more information of who could have done it and why.”

“That won’t tell us why the killer has decided to start a killing spree.” Emma replied, finishing her doughnut and taking a sip of her coffee. “You know that.”

Regina knew that. They were going with the easy route; discover how the dust had ended up on the market instead of trying to discover what had happened to their two victims. What if she was wrong? What would happen if, at the end, everything were two separate incidents and there was no killer but only a young couple who had decided on biting more than they could chew?

She shook her head just as Granny came closer to their desk, the small set of glasses -very similar to the ones her granddaughter used at the nightshift, she wore adjusting incessantly to her eyes, making them keener and more acute. Shaking her head when the old woman asked them if they wanted any more coffee, she went back to her notes, spread at her left on the table. Emma’s “Yes, please” made her pause and stare to the happily drinking blonde whose green eyes shone slightly tired. It had, to be honest, a long day.

The bruises had been real, she said to herself, they had been there, staring back at Emma and herself. The recent ones spoke of force being used against her. A woman who, for how she looked, didn’t seem to make the high-class streets her usual place to walk through, didn’t appear there, bruised and spitting ichor not prompted in any way. There had been, as well, the strange smell of ozone impregnating the air just as Emma, Ruby and herself had arrived to the crime scene. A scent often linked to magic. The one that only the ones who took Dust could perceive,  
  
reach and even touch with the usual smaller doses. Who knew what someone completely full with Dust could do. She found that the idea called her and so she focused on Emma once again, on her pale skin, long fingers and resolute expression.

“We need to find whomever that call themselves the author, see if they know anything about those kids.” The blonde spoke confidently just as the rectangular piece she had strapped near her badge vibrated once, the buzzing making almost everyone near them turn and stare, eyes quickly falling to their badges.

Manipulating the buzzer, Emma pushed the button that opened the small copper screen in where the machines displayed a glow that could only mean one thing.

Something else had happened.

 


	6. Chapter 5

The grey picture of the teen stared at Emma as she looked at it, her eyes following the traces of the rusty badly -done tattoo that made the skinny boy member of the Lost Boys, the gang known for stealing on the middle and upper parts of town. His mouth and eyes were open, ichor staining the tips of his frosted hair-tips and his old-looking clothing. Found near the forest, almost at the other side of town where Ashley had been found, the boy’s body seemed to have tried to be discarded judging by the soil that stained his face and jeans.

Glancing at her notes, the blonde sighed. The sky had begun to turn grey by the time both Regina and herself had arrived to the forest, clouds covering the sun that had, until then, shone on Storybrooke’s streets. The forest floor beneath her boots had given in softly, the myriad of leaves creating layer after layer of muddy greens and browns Emma had been staring at for the longest of times as she took on the image that awaited once they had reached the small human-made hole in where some of the forensics were collecting samples.

Another one, her mind said, turning her hands into fists as she eyed the young face that could be seen beneath the ichor. So young… she added, noticing that the kid couldn’t be more than 17. The symbol on his naked forearm the last thing she had needed to discover that she was right; There have been only one member of the Lost Boys who have reached adulthood. They were proud of only consisting of kids from the streets, all of them above 18. The boy they had now lying in front of them probably would have been one of the oldest, maybe just about starting to leave on their own, outside the gang.

At her side, Regina had let out an almost imperceptible sigh before crouching in front of the kid, the words “This could be Henry.” written all over her face. Emma considered on touching her shoulder, telling her to go and let her do the job even if she was upset as well. However, as it tended to happen whenever they were at work, she hesitated.

“We need to catch whomever that is doing this.” She finally settled on saying, a curt nod telling her more than enough.

The forensics report had come just as quickly as the second one. It appeared that they weren’t the only ones who had been told to do their job as quickly as possible and so the very same details of bruises and ichor were described on the rough papers that were on display above the picture Emma was currently looking at. Next to it, a small note written by hand displayed a few lines written by the medical examiner herself, traces of Mix making Emma’s pendant to warm at it.

“I’ve done a second autopsy to our John Doe. We didn’t see any bruises at first due to the degradation of the skin and ichor thanks to the humidity of the docks. He doesn’t have the same amount than Ashley -it appears that she fought harder, but he has some lines around his neck and wrists enough to make us suspect he was, at least, tied up.”

The Lost Boy, whose name was still being confirmed by Ruby, had similar lines around her neck and wrists, the way his chapped lips were parted looking almost like a macabre half-smirk as Emma stared at the picture yet again.

Regina had disappeared after they had come up from the morgue. Probably wanting to get ahold of Henry, see if he was alright. Emma had found herself wanting to do the same ever since she had gotten there, bile climbing up her throat.

The pattern that was beginning to form front of them was clear however; whatever that was happening only seemed to happen to people that weren’t going to create any kind of alarm. The  
  
John Doe, Ashley, the Lost Boy… all people easily forgotten by the newspapers. Luckily, they appeared to not have heard anything yet because after three deaths she was sure that it didn’t matter if they weren’t part of the elite; some of the papers would have a field day if they could paint the Division as doughnut-eater people unable to do their jobs.

Sighing, she glanced at Regina’s desk. The sun had come back less than an hour ago, just as she seated in front of her notes and had started to seek for any kind of connection between the three of their cases. The rays did nothing to cheer the bullpen’s atmosphere in where many colleges kept glancing at where she was, some muttering in barely audible voices what Emma bet was the case. Things were starting to heat up.

At the same time, she thought on Regina again, on how she had left with a thankful smile, promising to come back as quick as possible. Shaken, the brunette had left the bullpen in a flurry of movement so quick Emma would have said it had been magic.

Magic doesn’t exist. She thought, thinking again on what may those three kids had felt with so much Dust on their system. A connection with something bigger, something that hadn’t really be strong enough for centuries now? That was what many consumers of Dust said it was like to have taken some of it. The thought of consuming had never crossed Emma’s mind however, the story of her parents -the ones she didn’t remember, and how they had been forced to consume it in order to meet Cora’s deranged plan preventing her to do so.

The thought of Cora made her think on Regina again; the brunette would never say it so but the case was taken its toll. First the dust, then Gold and now the kid, barely older than Henry. Everyone had some cases that struck too close and this one seemed to be Regina’s.

A shadow crossed over Emma’s features but she kept herself on check, knowing that there was little she could do from there. Henry had been informed after all, Regina had gone to talk to him, be sure he was all right, ease her mind. After that she would be back there and they would work on the case. Just like they usually did.

Her tired eyes went back to the almost nothing information they had of the John Doe, scanning the lines she had already re-read a thousand of times. This time, however, her right hand which had been playing with a pencil, stopped in mid-movement at something she hadn’t thought on until now. Excited, she went to the information they had managed to gather from Ashley and the frugal lines from the Lost Boy.

There was something there, she realized, a tenuous connection. One so fragile she didn’t even think on going to White to talk about it. It, however, could help them to make some breach.

“Damned Gold.” She mumbled as she rose abruptly, her mind going quicker than her legs. “He was right all along.”

 

* * *

 

“Henry, I only asked you to refrain yourself for going out with the Lost Boys…”

“They are good guys! Why are you telling me this right now? Did you need to ask me to come back home only to this? Because it could have waited.”

Regina sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. As she had crossed the threshold she had realized Henry wasn’t on good spirits. That being something from school or anything else she didn’t know since the boy had refused to talk until he heard what had prompted his mother to ask for him to leave school an hour early.

Truthfully, back when Regina had seen the teen in front of her the only thought that had come to  
  
her mind had been; he looks far too young. It had been at the bullpen when she had realized that she had seen him on Henry’s company. Henry had used to know Pan, the gang’s leader and the only one who kept on the gang even after reaching 18. He had babysat Henry for a while when Henry had been younger and he had idolized the older boy to the point that when Pan had begun to appear on police records Regina had prohibited Henry to come near Pan in fear for Pan to be a bad influence on Henry. Now, as the face of the kid had come clearer on her mind’s eye the thought of Henry being in danger had blinded her for everything else.

“Emma and I are investigating a case.” She finally said, staring at Henry who kept on looking at her from where she stood, feet firmly planted on the floor and arms crossed in front of the stairs that led him to his room. “Some of it has something on the Lost Boys, I only want to be sure you are safe.”

She hated being so crude, so cruel. She, however, felt that there wasn’t anything else she could do. Henry flinched visibly at the news but kept his angry expression.

“And?” He said, his voice breaking at the end. Regina found herself wishing for the time to be able to fold and go back to yesterday’s night in where everything had gone smoother, easier. She knew that Henry, introvert Henry, appreciated the friendship some of the Lost Boys gave him. The idea of him being in danger because of them, however, paralyzed her.

Biting her lower lip, she let her shoulders fall in defeat. So quickly she had go home her badge and bracelet where still on her hand alongside with her own buzzer. She could see Henry glancing at those, not used to seeing her armed like she currently was inside home.

“We are still trying to make a profile, find the links between… everything. Emma…”

“I’m sure Emma wouldn’t tell me to stop seeing them just because of this.” The answer was said surly, an echo of the teen the boy was. Regina’s relationship with Henry was easier than before and she knew that she should’ve probably explained herself better instead of barging and just tell Henry that she knew he still met with some Lost Boys from time to time but she had only feel urgency once she had remembered that she had seen the kid before.

“She…” She tried to say, only to fell silent as Henry grabbed his backpack, irate.

“In fact,” Henry said through gritted teeth, slightly flushed due to his anger. “Why don’t you go to talk to her? You two spend so much pretending not to be talking about what you should be talking that’s making my head ache! You don’t want me to have any friends? Fine! But don’t use Emma against me.”

“Henry Daniel Mills!”

The scream, however, was made too late and the teen was already going to his room, backpack dangling from his shoulder, as she called for him.

In that moment, her buzzer let out a whirring sound and woke from its sleep. Considering how she had left the bullpen the call could only be from one person and so she looked quickly at Henry’s direction before closing her eyes.

“I need to go.” She called towards the now closed door. Nothing came out of it. “I will try to be back as quickly as possible.”

Something close to a grunt floated downstairs. Trying not to think on Henry’s words she turned and left, activating the alarm and closing the door twice just in case.

Some days she just hated her job.

“You don’t look very happy.” Emma said as Regina approached her, hands smoothing the creases on her coat. The brunette sighed and shook her head before closing the remaining distance between the two of them.

“It’s nothing.” She replied defensively, knowing very well by Emma’s arched brow the younger woman had definetely picked up on something. “Henry and I had a fight.” She added, the last bit of her conversation with him still echoing on her ears.

“You two spend so much pretending not to be talking about what you should be talking that’s making my head ache.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose she smiled tightly as Emma patted her hand briefly before clearing her throat and pointing to an underlined sentence on one of the many reports she had spread over her desk. Grateful that the blonde hadn’t investigated further, Regina read the sentence, frowning at it.

“What’s…?” She begun, only to be cut short by Emma who emphatically pointed at the line again, a smile on her lips.

“Remember what Gold told us? About the Blue Fairy. Although I don’t trust him that got me thinking and so I started to read the information we had of every murder. Know what I found? Our John Doe worked for the southwest part of the docks according to the clothes he was found with. Very near to the entrance of the Fairies warehouse. Ashley? Although we don’t have any information of where she had been living we can know that two months ago she worked for a small branch of the factory, cleaning and readying parcels. The Lost Boy was 17 Regina, he was about to get kicked out of the gang, he needed quick money. I can’t really prove it 100% without his name and we all know how difficult is for us to discover the real names of the Lost Boys but his clothes had the same color coding some plants of the factory has. I rechecked; he could have been a messenger. If that adds up our three victims shared one thing; to who they worked for.”

Regina stared as Emma finished talking, a giant smile on her face. She sighed, Emma was right; she couldn’t prove anything of it, not with enough strength for it to be considered a clue by a jury. It could, however, help them into having a string they could start to follow.

Glancing at the bullpen first and then at the closed door in where White still hid from the rest of them, she swallowed and turned back to Emma.

“Are you implying that Reul Ghorm is helping this… author?” She all but said it through gritted teeth. If Emma had come up with that idea the first months they had known each other she would have already dissed the idea as stupid. Now, however, she was open to discuss it.

“If you two talked…”

Emma shrugged and run a hand through her locks. It was a farfetched theory. One that they wouldn’t be able to get ahold to without a proper order and, at least, discovering what was the Lost Boy’s real name. She had written a note for Pan, leaving it to the usual ways the leader of the gang ended up knowing everything he needed to know.

“I don’t know. She perhaps can help us into, at least, crossing that idea out of the way. I sent a cable to her office. She is still there and she will be attending us in half an hour. That’s why I  
  
asked you to be contacted… but if you prefer I can go alone and tell you about it later. Or tomorrow.” She added in an afterthought.

Regina considered it only to humming a quick “no” even before the idea of not knowing fully formed into her head. She had a duty to do.

“Let’s go to see Ghorm.”

 

* * *

 

  
The headquarters for the biggest factory on the city were erected very close to the northern trail, a road that delved deep into the forest in where the lost boy had been found. The detail wasn’t lost on Regina who hummed as both Emma and herself approached the imposing edification created almost entirely out of stone. Something done, apparently, so no grain of dust and no drop of ink reacted to copper or any other conductive element as they were being processed and packaged.

The factory had smaller shops all through Storybrooke and through the even smaller villages scattered on that part of the forest, the more than famous symbol of the silhouette of a winged fairy raising to an undepicted sky looking back at them as they approached the main doors, guarded by two men who barely looked at them twice once they showed their badges.

Inside, they were quickly ushered to the third floor of the place by a small yet diligent fairy not looking older than 25. Her name, according to the tag she displayed on her chest, was Nora and she mumbled little tidbits of information regarding the factory as if she was merely showing it to them. The air felt strangely permeated with ozone and Regina could feel the bracelet protesting slightly as Emma’s pendant warmed visibly on her neck, leaving even a small red mark on her pale chest as they moved upwards.

“She will attend you two now.” Nora finally said with one final nod and a slight tremble on her right hand as she pointed to a set of closed wooden doors.

They barely had a moment to look at each other before the door opened, letting them enter a rectangular-shaped office with books upon books covering the walls in a, surprisingly, neatly done order neither of them could discover as they looked at the brunette woman dressed in blues and greys who stared at them from her desk’s chair.

Reul Ghorm was, by herself, an institution. She looked something in between a strict teacher and the kind of person you would never even dream on saying not to. Her hair was done in a comfortable bun that rested atop her neck, makeup done tastefully and eyes sharply set on everything at once, like a bird of prey. Her neck, wrists and fingers were naked of even the simplest accessory and even though the air was still full with ozone her office felt void of any machine with the only exception of a mailbox and brass lamp with similar manufacture to the ones they had back at the bullpen. The floor of the office was covered in a thick rug that swallowed the sound of their footsteps in a way Regina felt unnerving and as they approached the other woman - one hand extended- she felt the beginning of a headache beginning to settle behind her eyes.

Emma didn’t seem as suspicious as her although Regina knew her well enough to know that, for being so obvious and honest about her feelings, sometimes even abrasive, Emma knew very well when to hide her thoughts or discomfort.

“I’m Emma Swan.” The blonde reached Reul Ghorm with a polite and quick smile, seating just a second later on one of the chairs in front of the other woman’s desk. “I was the one who sent the cable.”  
  
“Pleased to meet you.” Ghorm’s voice was soft yet slightly too high pitched for Regina’s tastes. Almost as if the woman tried to impose another tone over hers in a way that not always worked for her. Sitting at the other chair and crossing one leg over the other, Regina studied the CEO. Gold had said enough for her to be as suspicious as Emma. However, the woman didn’t pin on her radar as being nothing else but a probably lover of the classes that divided the city. She, however, wasn’t the living lying detector.

“I’m Regina Mills.” She finally said, eliciting a mirror-like reaction from Ghorm who merely smiled before asking the dreaded question.   
“What can I do for you?”

Regina glanced at Emma. They didn’t have anything to really base their theories yet. That made this meeting shaky at best. The blonde, despite that, didn’t miss a beat and she extracted a set of papers from her leather jacket Regina quickly recognized as carefully done copies of the forms they had been looking at since the beginning of the case.

“We’re following a thread in our investigation regarding a set of murders.” Ghorm’s eyes widened slightly at the word and clasped her hands together, her head tilted to the right as Emma pointed to the name of Ashley. “We are merely crosschecking the facts we already have and we were wondering if you could give us confirmation that Ashley Boyd worked for the factory.”

Regina kept staring at Reul, not missing the way the other brunette schooled her features at the name of Ashley.

“I don’t know the names of every single one of my employers but I could ask for that to be checked if that’s what you need.” The answer came succinct and Regina glanced at Emma quickly before the younger woman hummed before pointing at another sentence on the copies she was holding. Already seeing where the blonde was going Regina beat her to it, her face a perfect copy of Reul’s careful expression.

“We also would want to know if you employ the Lost Boys from time to time.”

This time Reul’s brow visibly twitched as she nodded carefully. “The older ones work occasionally for us, that’s correct. Everything is perfectly legal; usually they are mere errand boys. I feel that it’s a way to give them something to go to once they are expelled from the gang. Why?”

The last sentence was said with a smile and a feigned expression of confusion that only made Regina’s neck to prickle as Emma at her side cleared her throat.

“As I said, we are just revising our information. Lastly, is there any place where you hold your workers’ information and pictures? Could we take a look at them?”

Reul Ghorm smiled tightly and stood, walking through the rug until she opened the closed door occasioning a flurry of movement as Nora stood from her chair and glanced at her, expectantly.

“Yes, Miss Ghorm?”

Reul pointed at both Emma and Regina just as Emma stood from her chair, making Regina do the same.

“Help them in whatever they may need, dear. And officers?”

The last question halted Regina’s step just as she crossed the door, making her stare at a now set of completely void eyes that didn’t warm when the CEO smiled.

“Next time you need my help run it first with my secretary. As much as I want to help in any way  
  
I can I can’t stop my day. Not even for the Division. I hope you can understand.”

The doors closed behind them as quickly as they had opened, leaving both Emma and Regina staring at a now slightly flushed Nora.

“So…” The young fairy said while fidgeting with a pencil. “What would you need my help with?”

 

* * *

 

  
A note arrived later at night to one of the more far away houses in town, its stone and wood walls dark enough to be hidden in plain sight with the tall trees and dark foliage around it. Inside, written in a neat calligraphy only a line welcomed the inhabitant of the house.

_“We are running out of time.”_

Another note quickly did the opposite journey back into the center of the city.

_“Let’s step up the game then.”_


	7. Chapter 6

“Of course she was lying. Thing is that we don’t have anything to proof that.”

Regina’s tired voice echoed through the bullpen as both she and Emma entered through the main doors, her footsteps stopping on her desk as Emma did the same several meters at her right.

Both women sported dark circles around their eyes and Emma was drinking her second coffee of the day thanks to Ruby kindness. The woman had needed to only look at the blonde one second before deciding that it was obvious she hadn’t slept properly last night -right- and it had obviously, something to do with Regina-wrong- considering how tired the other woman also looked. She had given Emma a second coffee, asking Regina if she wanted one only to be answered with a cold stare.

“Don’t you say.” The blonde replied while finishing the cup and sighing at its emptiness. “I spent all-night trying to find any clue on what Nora gave us. The Lost Boys are a dead end; they had their general description only written down. Ours looks like four of them at least. Ashley is gone. Her record is written as existing once but it’s not there anymore and our John Doe is impossible to be found without a proper name.”

Regina closed her eyes and caressed her temples. The news of the names of their murders being a dead end was frustrating but not something she hadn’t expected after yesterday’s chat with the blue fairy. Emma had only needed a second after leaving the building to tell her in a frustrated sigh that the woman was purposely hiding something. Whatever that was.

“And Pan?” She asked through gritted teeth. There were times in where she wished to be able to throw fireballs freely without getting in trouble for them. This case felt like one of those times.

Emma shook her head. “Nothing, he answered me by telling me he didn’t plan on talking to me anytime soon. The note was left next to a dead bird by the way. My neighbor almost had a heart attack.”

Regina smiled slightly despite the bad news but felt the smile slip off her when she thought again on her own evening.

Henry hadn’t come down to dinner once she had arrived home. Regina knew that she should have explained herself better. Her worry, however, had been stronger and she hadn’t known what to do. The utter silence had made her wonder if she could call for Emma, ask her to come over, talk, anything. She had halted just as the idea had begun to form, Henry’s words echoing on her mind.

She didn’t need to add any more confusion to an already complicated situation.

“I’ve thought about what Ghorm gave us.” She finally said, walking up to Emma and picking the papers the blonde had all over her desk. Emma’s perfume hit her for a moment as she did so, making her blink before catching herself. “It was obvious that she was hiding something, right?”

Emma nodded. “Definetely.”

Regina hummed. “She may know that someone is stealing the Dust and doesn’t want to tell us because of something we are not seeing or she may be part of this. She even may don’t want to admit she has lost control of who has the Dust. I know some people at the mayoral office that would have a field day if Ghorm admitted to be guilty of all of this. Whatever that is, that amount of Dust needed for several people in a short amount of time would create something we would be  
  
able to trace. Like your pendant does.”

Emma stared at Regina, first not really talking and later nodding as the brunette’s words entered on her brain.

“We need to find that trace.” She thought outload. “If we find the place…” “We will have something to go back to Ghorm.”

Emma nodded and stood quickly, her knees bumping into her desk, making Regina lose her own footing as she was. The sudden movement made them stood closer than before, both set of eyes glancing down for a second too long.

“Message for Mills and Swan.”

The voice of Sidney Glass made the two of them part as the few that had come as early as they had done glanced towards their direction before turning back to their own cases. The short, lanky man gave Regina his signature lovesick puppy look before handing the small piece of paper to Emma, the blonde frowning as she felt a sudden burn around her neck.

“Regina?” She asked, eliciting a frown from Regina as she waved Sidney goodbye with a quick movement of her fingers.

“You sent another message to Pan?” She asked, circling the table and almost putting her hand over Emma’s forearm as the blonde unfolded the small missive.

“No, this is not his usual…” Words died out on the blonde’s throat as the warmth around her neck only grew stronger, shaky fingers circling her pendant as she read the neat, small writing that waited for them both in ink as black as coil. “Regina?”

In the middle of the paper the words _“Stop meddling”_ waited for them, the ink shinning beneath the warm golden light of the office almost as if they had just been written down.

“What the…”

Regina’s expletive was cut short but Emma’s sudden cry of pain, her gaze settled on her fingers that felt glued to the paper in where the ink had ebbed away, touching the blonde’s skin in the process; wherever the ink touched the skin angry red and purple marks appeared on the blonde’s flesh, eating the skin away as a strange scent, not ozone but something darker, like stagnant murky water, seemed to float in the air.

“Emma!”

Picking the piece of paper Regina threw it away, the ink of the paper diluting as it fell in the floor.

Emma was glancing at her hand, the angry colors slowly disappearing from her skin.

“What the hell has just happened?”

* * *

 

   
It turned out Sidney didn’t know who had sent the message. It had appeared on his desk down at the first floor and he had thought he had forgotten to send it in. Considering that it was a message for Regina as well as for Emma he hadn’t been able to stop himself and so he had delivered it personally. According to him, he had gone to Granny’s for a second, buying there his morning coffee. He had been out less than 10 minutes, he said between deep, affected sobs, they could’ve  
  
slipped inside and leave that note during that time.

Being realistic, the blonde muttered while glancing at her skin every few seconds, they had nothing.

“The confirmation that we’re coming closer.” Regina replied with a nod, pointing at the list they had been about to start reading in order to determine where were the places in where Dust could’ve been smuggled from. “And Reul’s own implication in all of this.”

Emma hummed at the thought, swallowing on White’s direction as the man looked at them from his doorframe, the sickly look of his skin casting shadows over his wrinkles as the rest of the officers came down to their places, all of them casting nervous glances to every new paper they touched. For everything that had happened, however, Emma doubted they were going to receive a similar trait that she had had.

“We really didn’t have a clue when we went to talk to her.” She muttered, opening and closing her hand, the residual pain something close to the prickling sensation of her hand haven fell asleep. The touch of the ink had been oily, thicker than the usual ink. It had felt strange on her skin, almost if, by itself, it tried to climb and write through her flesh. Nothing than any other normal report would probably share with the note. “Why even bothering to clue us in that we were searching where we needed to do so?”

Regina, who was eyeing her hand with the same look of concern that had adorned her face ever since the ink had dissolved into nothing, tilted her head and shrugged, her badge catching the dim light of the bullpen and glinting as she reached for Emma’s wrist. She was still wearing her bracelet; copper filaments grazing the blonde’s skin as she caressed the bony hand with her thumb, playing on it quickly drawn circles that tingled as Emma could feel herself blush.

Regina blinked before moving backwards, squaring her shoulders and pointing at the meagre notations she had atop of her table.

“It could be someone else with connections to the Fairies. They could have seen us entering the place and felt that we were coming closer than they wanted us to be.”

Emma cleared her throat before running a hand over her hair, the residual static that kept floating near her crackling on her fingers as she did so. The inky substance was still on her mind’s eye; they hadn’t been able to send any trace downstairs but almost everyone could have said that the ink had been treated so it could be what was known as Author’s ink. The electric substance that made the dust the moving force whenever a bead of the Mix was put into any machine. Someone was trying very hard to either call for their attention or trying to scare them. Maybe even both.

“If Ghorm is linked to all of this.” She finally said between whispers, glancing around before moving closer to Regina. “Then she could be hiding how she suffuses that amount of Dust outside the factory in the form of seemingly legal contracts.”

Regina blinked once before retreating to her desk, propping against it before nodding. From where Emma was she couldn’t really tell but a faint blush seemed to cover the brunette’s cheeks and for a second the blonde did nothing but stare until she was reminded where it was by Regina’s own voice.

“I’ve asked a list of the fairies’ properties.” As soon as she finished talking the box at her desk chimed and spitted several ink -stained pages in where a list of a surprising amount of properties were listed alongside with the number of boxes had been sent towards them. “Ghorm didn’t want to help us but this information…” She said while picking the papers, a smirk on her face. “… can be seen by everyone.”  
  
Emma smirked and grabbed the papers Regina was handling to her. She hated paperwork and that part was usually handled by the brunette but she was starting to be fed up of feeling lost. Sitting on her desk and beginning the slow reading of the apparently unending warehouses the fairies owned near Storybrooke.

 

* * *

 

  
It took them more than four hours and almost the same quantities of coffee before Regina clicked her tongue and circled a short name almost in the middle of the list she had been reading and checking non-stop. A residential house in the north side of Storybrooke, almost touching the forest that surrounded the city Something strange considering than the other properties were either warehouses or industrial places in where the shipments were either for storage or readied for them to travel to several of the cities the fairies provided for.

“I think I have something.” She said while stretching her back and staring at the desk in front of her, vaguely registering that the desks surrounding theirs were empty. Her voice died out as she took on Emma’s sleeping form in front of her, head on her right hand, eyes closed and drool almost coming out of her parted lips.

She was in the verge of coming closer when White screamed her name behind her, eliciting a jump from Emma as she blinked sheepishly and the curious stares of the few who hadn’t cleaned out their desks in case some other note reached the bullpen.

Sighing, Regina turned and stared at White, his face a few shades darker than usual. The man was wearing a pair of spectacles that made him look even older but the warning on his posture didn’t escape Regina’s gaze who followed suit, her bracelet glinting on her desk where she had left it a few hours ago. Useless.

“Not you, Swan.” White exclaimed as Regina approached him. “Just Mills this time.”

Regina could hear the snickers as she finally entered White’s office, her back as straight as she could and a careful created mask covering her repulse for the man that was her superior. Instead of saying anything, however, which was what a part of her prompted her to do, she focused instead on the almost the same desk that had greeted both Emma and herself a few days before. Still full to the brim, the old pistol had disappeared and was now being displayed at the wall in front of her, the pearly white line around the handle catching her attention before the man sat at the chair behind his desk, making her change her focus from the pistol to him.

White was many things, Regina thought; a benevolent lieutenant if one wanted to believe on the façade he put every day, a hardworking man if you were fool enough to think that or even a compassionate man. However, all of those tidbits of information, information he had used for his own personal gain, couldn’t hide the fact that for all of this White was horrible with his poker-face. He hated her, it was something as obvious as the tremble that seemed to have descended on the man’s hands as he now interlaced them.

The feeling was some or less mutual, of course, but if someone looked inside White’s office they wouldn’t have been able to tell.

“I don’t care what you do on your free time, Mills.” Leopold started, seeming to bite on every of his words in order to not to scream. “But I don’t want to hear anymore speculation of what the daughter of Cora Mills is doing with Emma Swan. Understood?”

Regina blinked; she hadn’t really been expecting that. Not in the slightest. Dumbfounded, she opened her mouth only to be cut short again by the man’s exasperated sigh.  
  
“Some would say that what you are trying is to corrupt her. I won’t enter into politics or into your own past.”

“Liar.” Regina thought; everyone knew that her name would forever be associated to politics. Like White’s did and many others from the time her mother had tried to create a new era. As twisted as that was.

“But if I ever see you again like I saw you outside I will throw you to the wolves. No questions asked. Got it?”

Regina swallowed and briefly thought on what White had said. On what he had seen. She hadn’t really done anything and, momentarily, she thought on saying that to man, realizing just as quickly that she wouldn’t be able to get her point across. She had already got used to the word that tended to float between her coworkers. Rumors had been floating ever since Emma had been paired up with her and she hadn’t killed her on the spot. Quite a low bar if anyone wanted Regina’s opinion.

However, they had never been told anything by a superior. Not until now and Regina found herself unsure if she could speak to Emma about why she had been called to White’s office. Muttering a quick “Yes sir” she exited the place, careful to close the door behind her while avoiding any curious stares from her coworkers.

She had enrolled in the Division out of spite at first more than the moronic ideas the force taught at the Academy again and again; she wanted to prove a point. The point of her not being her mother. She had excelled at it until someone else with a name as powerful has hers had appeared in the picture; Emma Swan.

Emma didn’t believe on the white and black ideas many of the ones at the force believed in; she had also had her fair share of grey. However, she held a different type of belief, a trust on how actions always spoke louder than words, no matter what those were. That had made it be the reason why they had ended becoming friends. Or something.

Sitting at her own desk and grabbing the bracelet from where she had left it, Regina found Emma’s stare and muttered a brief “Everything’s fine.” That didn’t seem to convince the blonde much.

She had always known when she was lying after all and, Regina thought, how could she even think on denying a rumor she wasn’t sure wasn’t true anymore?

 

* * *

 

  
“I still don’t know why you don’t want to tell me what was the matter with White.” Emma was saying as they did their way into the darkened street. It had rained a little a while before and even though the clouds had already disappeared there were still puddles on the small road, muddy droplets staining the already worn out asphalt. Both the blonde and Regina wore their badges on full display and a few of the ones who lurked into the place looked at them once before moving away as fast as they could, weary stares following their movements.

Regina sighed; it was already mid-afternoon and yet Emma hadn’t let the chat with the lieutenant go, no matter how many times she assured the blonde that there wasn’t a thing she needed to worry about.

“I told you, it’s nothing.” The brunette finally replied as the blonde kicked an empty glass bottle, its contents sloshing inside but never spilling. Regina didn’t react to it but stared at the younger woman with a cocked brow.  
  
Emma sighed and rose her hands in defeat. “Fine… how’s everything with Henry?

Regina bit down on her bottom lip. Henry. That was another subject she didn’t want to discuss with the blonde due to how close it was to the why White had called for her. Not when she was still thinking about it. The blonde, however, was worth an answer.

“We are… still fighting.”

Emma eyed her as they finally reached the door they were there for.

“If I can do anything…”

Regina nodded, surpassing Emma and entering Gold’s pawnshop for the second time in the same days.

“I know, thank you.”

Gold’s shop was in the same state that they had left it a few hours before with the only difference than instead of a woman a young man no older than 21 glanced at them from their side of the counter before seeing their badges and taking a step backwards, his hips hitting the counter as Gold smirked behind it, his suit glimmering into the lighted place as the threads it was made off were made with his namesake.

“Officers!” He spoke as the man whose intricated tattoo on his uncovered wrist signaling him as being one of the many security guards that some of the richer houses employed, walked past the two of them, hurriedly trying to hid what seemed to be a stash of dust. “How can I help you?”

Regina could feel the heat on Emma’s glance as the door behind them closed with a jingle. The blonde hadn’t wanted to go to Gold once they had managed to reduce the impressing list to two different places apart from the house she was still suspicious of at the edge of town. Regina, however, had insisted on going until Emma had admitted defeat.

“Gold was the one that led us to Ghorm and told us about the author. He knows something.”

“How to get into our nerves! I swear one day I will punch him in the face Regina. I’m not kidding.”

Emma could be many things, sore loser, however, wasn’t one and with only one last skeptic glance at her, the blonde took a step forwards while resting her hands on her narrow hips.

“We want to make you a few questions.”

Gold tilted his head, his smirk making him look almost reptilian as he waited for either Emma or Regina to speak. The second Regina parted her lips, however, Emma beat her to it, a fiery glance on her eyes that shone greener -or seemed to- from where Regina was for a second.

“What do you know about the Blue Fairy?”

The man hummed, still looking amused, before sighing; his chest raising and failing as he feigned surprise.

“Why would I know something of our beloved Reul? There’s nothing I can help you with, officers.”

A nerve trembled on Emma’s temple. Regina could feel her own patience running thin.

“You know what we are talking about.” She finally said, pausing before she placed her left hand on Emma’s back, a sudden electric current seeming to run up her arm as she did so. Frowning, White’s words came to mind and so she moved away from the blonde before raising her hand enough so her bracelet was in full display. “You wanted us to do your dirty job. Clever. However, I can still send here some officers, tell them to clean this place and see how many prattler’s names we manage to find and catch. How about that?”

Punches were good, Regina thought while throwing at Emma a small self-satisfied smirk. But threats were better.

Rumple waited for a fraction of a second before letting out a small laugh that got lost on the many objects his shop was full off.

“There have been some movement on a small property Miss Ghorm possess at the edge of town, very close to the forest and less than thirty minutes ago from the factory. Several… boxes had been seen, all of them labeled with the Fairies logo.” Gold made a pause before pointing at the general direction of where the house was. Regina nodded and she could feel Emma doing the same at her side; it was the very same house she had felt intrigued by; a property under the direct name of Ghorm but linked to the factory in a way the papers she had managed to get her hands into didn’t really explain.

“So you think that the Blue Fairy is behind this?” Regina heard Emma asking. The idea was, in itself, worrisome. The Blue Fairy was the responsible of the production and distribution of dust and Mix not only in Storybrooke but in a good part of the Enchanted Forest as well, the implications of the woman being in the middle of what was a series of gruesome murders wouldn’t sit well once the news got to the press. And they were eventually going to find out that the Division were taking care of all of this.

Gold, however, didn’t seem worried about the mediatic nightmare his words were going to bring and so he laughed before shaking his head, the lapels of his suit glimmering briefly at it.

“That’s not my job, officers. I’m merely a concerned citizen.”

Emma kept on eyeing Gold, her face almost glowing with the distrust the man produced on her. They, however, didn’t have any other option but play with Gold’s rules if they wanted to know the finishing pieces of the puzzle. Or, at least, enough so they could know what was waiting for them in that house.

Taking Emma’s forearm and squeezing it once, Regina let her know that the conversation was over; Gold wasn’t going to tell them more.

“We still have things to discuss.” She said behind her back only to be met by a set of glowing eyes.

“I’m sure of it.” Gold finally replied. “I hope to help you in the future then, officers, back when… this part of the city has returned to its usual calmness.”

And, with that last string of words, the door closed in front of an irate Emma and a strangely tired Regina.


	8. Chapter 7

By the time they arrived to the street in where Ghorm’s property stood, the beginning of dawn had started to paint shadows on the slowly coming to life lampposts. The eerie silence that floated through the air made the two women fall silent, dragged into the cooling breeze that seemed to play around them, bringing with it a thick fog that slithered between their feet as they approached the far end of the street in where a mansion stood already half-covered in darkness.

Made of wood, the baroque exterior of the building spoke of a kind of money Emma eyed twice before shuddering. The closed glass windows were rimmed with craved details they couldn’t see from this distance and both grasped their badge instinctively as the final sunrays disappeared at the other side of the tall trees that surrounded the place. As the final lampposts titillated back to live Emma glanced as Regina just as the brunette fastened the dark long coat she wore, the purple accents of her blouse peeking as she closed the buttons before ironing invisible creases on her midriff.

“Still thinking on Henry?” She asked, eliciting a small jump from the unexpecting brunette. She wasn’t a fool, she could see a shadow of something on her Regina’s demeanor and, as it usually happened, she closed her hands at the warm feeling on her fingertips that asked for her to reach for the older woman.

Regina smiled once before expelling the last of the air she had on her lungs, black tresses caressing her cheeks as she rose her chin towards the roof of the house in where, if one narrowed their eyes, the fog seemed to almost create a halo around it.

“I wish I could have send a cable to him.” She finally said, biting on her lower lip before moving towards the front fence, the door of it swinging open almost a millimeter before she touched it.

Emma frowned and approached Regina, caressing her back just a moment only for the older woman to shudder at the touch.

“Strange…” The blonde muttered, crossing the fence while already touching her pendant. “Regina?”

The brunette nodded and activated her bracelet, the whirring of wheels and copper reaching Emma’s ears as the woman’s gauntlet sparkled. Doing the same with hers, the blonde turned on her own bracelet, the one at her hip buzzing as faint energy lines covered her knuckles and upper arm.

“Be careful.” Regina muttered, pointing at the faded lines on the muddy entrance at the left of the main door of the mansion that signaled how heavy carriages had been there shortly before them. “We don’t have an order, if we…”

“I’m only going to knock.” Emma cut her short while raising her other hand, the whirring on her bracelet chiming louder as her fingers touched the wooden door. She could feel her pendant heating up almost instantly but nothing came from the main door nor from the tightly closed doors. “Hello?” She called, raising her voice. At her back Regina sighed and glanced at the upper floors, trying to distinguish something through the darkened glasses. No light or movement, however, broke her stare and so she looked down at Emma just as the blonde extracted a skeleton key from her left pocket.

Eyes widening, Regina closed the distance between Emma and herself and grabbed the contraption in where small wheels awaited for the holding of the key to insert it on peephole.

“What do you think you are doing?” She all but whispered as Emma pointed angrily at the closed door.

“Did you think that they were going to let us enter? If Gold is right they aren’t really keen on inviting us there! What do you think could be happening inside?” Running the same hand over her tresses the blonde kept on speaking, not letting Regina interrupt her. “We don’t know what’s happening, Regina. What if someone else is inside? I don’t really want to see another body filled to the brim with ichor. Do you?”

Regina closed her hand even more tightly around the key until the copper that formed the cogs protested on her palm. Emma was right; she knew that. However, the idea of breaking into the house made a part of her itch. They really didn’t know a thing of why the murders, of what was happening. Entering into one of Ghorm’s properties could very well be the last decision on her careers after all.

Licking her lips, she glanced at Emma’s, parted and flushed thanks to the cold that kept on growing due to the fog.

_“If you just talked…”_

She realized that she truly wanted to speak to Henry and ask him if what he had implicitly said was truly alright for him, whatever that had been. She realized, at the end, that she was simply afraid, afraid of this case in where a part of her, a shadowed part of her, still craved the same drug that had killed those poor kids. Magic, she thought while opening her hand, offering the key to Emma, always came with a price.

The blonde picked the key and nodded at her, the ghost of a caress heating Regina’s fingers as Emma turned and picked on the keyhole until the door protested, opening slightly under Emma’s grip.

“Shall we?” The green-eyed woman asked, saving the key on her pocket once again. On her face a small smug smirk could be seen and Regina, despite, herself, smiled.

“Shall we.” She replied before lighting her bracelet, a small fireball dancing on the middle of her palm as she stepped inside. Emma followed her suit and surpassed her while raising her hand, the crackle on her slightly glowing bracelet illuminating faintly her profile as she peered into the dark room that welcomed them.

From where she was, Regina could see Emma’s pendant and how the woman scratched her neck, something bothering the actively searching necklace. She, however, found herself completely surprised by the wooden panels that covered the room with intricated patters weaved into the wood in a similar fashion Reul’s office had been.

Books covered the wall at her right, the hall delving into a corridor she wasn’t able to see where it led, a chandelier hung from the ceiling, made entirely out of glass and brass accents that shone as they walked below it. There wasn’t any copper on the hall, nor the classic Mix beads near an alarm. However, Emma kept on touching her pendant, brows furrowed.

“Regina?” She whispered, pointing at her right in where an opened door awaited them. The brunette nodded, directing the fireball towards the door, unbuttoning her coat while doing so. Nothing, however, expected them except for even more books whose worn out spines glimmered as the fireball illuminated them.

Coming closer, Regina caressed the books with her other hand as Emma went for a circular-shaped table in the middle of the room. The titles of the manuscripts were almost faded due to the many times they had been read but Regina was able to make some of them, the fireball becoming smaller once she pushed the right cog on the Mix receptacle in order to not burn them.

“’History of a stolen kingdom’ ‘Ink Chronicles’…” She halted, recognizing the name from one of the many books her mother had considered to be almost sacred while she tried to reform the magic laws. Narrowing her eyes and reading quickly several other spines she felt the beginning of a cold ball on the bottom of her stomach, thick tendrils of dread curving on the back of her throat. Something wasn’t right. “Emma?”

The blonde’s answer was a hum that felt louder on Regina’s ears as she turned to stare at her. Emma’s bracelet crackled as the blonde extended her arm, the lines around her knuckles disappearing as Emma followed her gaze onto the books with a mirroring frown that turned deeper as she, too, recognized the titles of some of them.

“What the…” She whispered, approaching Regina and picking one of the thicker books made of brown leather that cracked as looked at it. “’Authors and wishes’ I thought your mother was the only one who had this book.”

“I believed that as well.” Regina replied gravely, pointing at the papers on top of the table Emma had been looking at. “Anything there?”

The blonde, still eyeing the book on her hands with revulsion on her features, shook her head. “Notes I couldn’t decipher. Perhaps you could take a look at…”

Her voice trailed off as Regina heard a soft clicking sound somewhere a few feet above their heads. Before she could move, however, a sweet scent reached her nostrils and she felt her mind beginning to swim.

Even before her head reached the floor she was already out.

-.-

Emma could feel the taste of dried blood on her mouth by the time she felt a titillating light filtering through her closed eyelids. Her body felt strange, cold and unresponsive as she tried to move and for that she groaned, blinking owlishly while trying to recognize where she was.

What she saw, however, was enough to make her halt.

The wooden panels on the walls around her were now decorated with copper and brass, intricate tubes and flickering lights seeming to almost be pouring to the center of the room in where nothing but those bulbs illuminated the strangely looking cauldron in where a substance as black as tart quietly awaited. Emma frowned, she didn’t need her pendant to recognize the substance as author’s ink, the oily substance bubbling as she tried to recognize where Regina was, the image of the brunette falling to her knees suddenly filling her mind.

She, however, found herself tied up, a cogs-made contraption closing on her wrists hard enough so her fingers felt numb in a very similar manner the Division usually handled their own prisoners.  Her bracelet -she realized- was gone and only the bar on her waist remained, the filaments unresponsive now she didn’t have the other part of the machine to command it.

“Regina?” She spoke, her voice hoarse as she blinked away the last remains of numbness she still felt.

“Closer than you think.” A male voice answered at her back. Unable to move, Emma could only glance as a shadow circled her, a small, dark haired man looking at her while smiling with her lips tightly closed. He wore brown, unimpressive, clothes creased and stained with ink that jutted out from the plain fabric. From his fingers -equally stained- two bracelets dangled almost mockingly. “Look at your back, Swan.”

Emma couldn’t but as soon as she tried to look above her right shoulder she realized that what she had mistakenly thought to be some kind of fabric in where she had been put against was, in fact, Regina’s back. The brunette was unresponsive and Emma clenched her teeth as she looked again at the newcomer; noticing the golden flicker that dusted the edges of his shirt; Dust.

“Who the hell are you?” The blonde asked, moving her wrists around the contraption only to hiss in pain; the cogs’ dented borders dug on her skin mercilessly, not enough to drag blood but enough for her skin to become red as she tried to fight them. The man, at first, didn’t answered, merely coming closer to the cauldron in where several of the tubes that run towards the wooden panels of the walls gurgled as they filtered droplets of that ink as it spilled from its container.

The rest of the room came into focus bit by bit; from the stairs that seemed to led to an upper floor at her left to the several other objects that were propped against wooden tables in where a strange mix of gold and black dotted their surface. Several empty boxes in where a familiar logo stood out were precariously put against one of the small blank spaces of the wall, the beads of Dust nowhere to be seen.

“You could call me the Author.” The man’s voice was measured, controlled, soft even as she finally answered Emma’s question while he manipulated a handle that protruded from a mechanic object Emma truly didn’t know what it was. The mix of metal and dancing lights shuddered once before starting to tremble at a growing speed as the man turned towards Emma once again just as Regina, at Emma’s back, began to move, a groan coming out of her as she did. “I believe you have already heard of me.”

Emma blinked; taking into the man’s presence. Less than a lunatic, he seemed like a man about to start his shift. His receding hairline and sad eyes were as anodyne as his clothes and only the expensive looking quill that peeked from his breast pocket actually stood out from his figure. Everything else, from his face to his shoes, did nothing but to reinforce that idea.

 _“It’s always the ones that don’t look like they are crazy_.” Emma briefly thought while trying with her handcuffs yet again.

“Emma?” Regina’s voice woke Emma from her reverie and she twisted her neck as the man smirked and came closer to them, kneeling just in front of Emma while tilting his head.

“Glad you are already awake Miss Mills. I wouldn’t want that you missed what’s about to happen.”

Emma could feel Regina tensing at her back and she wished to be able to tell her that she had everything under control. Alas, she did not and for that she groaned just as the man stood again, walking towards one of the further boxes and extracting one bead of unadulterated Dust.

“Authors has been extinct since before the Ogre wars.” Emma said, raising her voice over the clattering of the clucking machine. The man nodded calmly as he poured the contents of the bead into a small vial. Emma could feel her pendant warming up, almost burning her, as the pure substance fell into the glass.

She wasn’t liking what she was seeing in the slightest and she could feel Regina’s nervousness coming out of her in waves as she tried -and failed- to do a similar thing she had tried mere minutes before. With growing dread starting to bubble inside of her, the green-eyed woman did her best to put as much weight she could on Regina’s back; the only way she had to let her know she was alright.

“They were exterminated.” The man answered, turning towards the two of them again with an almost maniac expression on his face. “We thought that the time of magic had reached its end. We stopped believing on them, thinking our machines could do the work.”

“However,” He continued as he squatted between Emma and Regina, freeing enough so Emma could feel a cold vice grip on her shoulder as the man pushed her towards one of the nearest table. “We didn’t see their potential. They were artists, artists obliged to follow the rules. We slaughtered them.”

Fastening Emma’s still tied hands, the man covered the blonde’s fingers with a series of filaments very similar to Regina’s bracelet with the exception that they were covered on the same black ink that still gurgled on the cauldron next to her. The inhuman strength of the man disappeared just as the new machine made contact with Emma’s exposed skin, the excruciating pain she had felt a few hours before when she had touched the ink of the letter growing only exponentially.

“I’m another type of Author.” The man kept on, not glancing twice at Emma as the blonde muffled a cry as she could feel the blistering pain only growing as seconds started to lengthen. “I want to create without a rule, I want to be the artist the first authors were. I can’t, however, do that alone.”

Emma moved her hands, trying to free herself with growing anxiety as she saw how the man moved towards Regina who bit back a seemingly cold laugh. One that could have fooled others but didn’t to Emma.

Afraid, Emma thought, Regina was afraid.

“You are deranged.” She heard the brunette say with enough spite to echo on the copper covered room. The pain on Emma’s wrists grew, droplets of blood beginning to stain the filaments. Sadly, the man didn’t seem impressed on Regina’s insult.

“You mother was called crazy as well.” He replied with a crooked smile Emma didn’t see but could hear on his voice.

“My mother was crazy.” Regina replied just as Emma managed to lock her stare with hers.

_“I’m here, I’m here.”_

The author kept on talking as he rose the glass vial above his head, the movement raising his sleeve enough for Emma to see the thousands of scarred writings on his skin. Throwing a quick glance to her still bleeding wrists, Emma choked out a sob, the tendrils of the ink beginning to crawl up her arm, painting lines she was able to feel as the ink ate the skin away.

“She was a genius. It was a pity she was stopped. I was, however, lucky enough to drag the attention of Reul. She helped me start my experiments, the one that would help me achieve the greatness of those who came before us.”

Emma could hear the man’s voice but she didn’t focus on him, unable to see anything else but Regina’s increasingly paler face and her own tied hands. The bar on her waist and the necklace burnt her skin as well and the pain was starting to make her want to vomit, wishing for her brain to let her pass out.

“So the Blue Fairy helped you.” Emma said, voice trembling, trying to keep the man away from Regina as his arm with the Dust approached worryingly to Regina’s face.

“She did.” The man spoke, not moving an inch. “I needed Dust so I could perfection the Mix, make it a permanent portal between magic and our own reality. Things didn’t work as I thought they would; keeping my experiments trapped here became more difficult when they were full of Dust.”

Emma remembered the John Doe, Ashley, the Lost Boy. All of them had been force-fed; Regina had been right and as she realized that she could feel her sight narrowing until only the vial of Dust seemed to exist; far too close to Regina’s mouth.

“I think however, that I’ve come closer this time.” The man spoke dangerously calm. “And who else but the daughter of the woman that almost got it done the first time to try it?”

Regina was trembling the second the author forced her to open her mouth, the vial hovering over her mouth as she muffled a scream.

“I told Reul that I could take care of you. I doubt she believed me but you were starting to suspect about her and that I couldn’t allow.”

Emma fought harder against the cuffs; Regina wasn’t fighting, her entire attention focused into the vial that hold the Dust. The copper on the blonde waist felt hotter than ever, burning her as she began to scream, her voice ricocheting on the walls. She was running out of time.

Suddenly, she thought again on the bar. The author hadn’t taken it off, believing that without the bracelet they would be helpless. However, the amount of energy that it was needed for the machine that was currently beginning to smoke due to the concentrated ink, worked with copper as well, copper and mix.

It was a dangerous shot, she thought, still screaming. One that if she missed wouldn’t let her try it again. However, the second the Dust touched Regina’s lips she forgot about her fear and smashed her body against the object, the heat radiating from her hip growing exponentially as the copper filaments around her wrists and which came out from the contraption towards the floor began to heat up.

A crack echoed on the room. Then another. And another as sparks began to appear, burning the air and transforming it into ozone as Emma kept on pushing herself against the machine, the pain climbing just as the author turned, completely surprised to see his machines beginning to smoke.

At his feet, completely gone, Regina stared into the space, eyes glowing purple and gold.

“No! Stop!” The man’s voice was muffled by yet another cracking noise as Emma began to feel the copper filaments beginning to give in, droplets of ink falling from her hands, creating black rivulets as the first flames began to grow.

Afterwards, Emma would be able to remember how she had pulled against the grip on her hands until the cables had given up, rushing to the man’s side and raising the bar still strapped to her waist until the residual energy on every one of the filaments triggered it, crackling energy seeming to come out of her fingers as the ink still burned her skin. In that very moment, though, she only could focus on Regina as the woman began to close her eyes, the air around her titillating, full with electricity as the author run towards the cauldron, hands first and not seeming to care about the growing flames that began to appear across the wooden panels.

Emma, however, didn’t have the same luxury and with fear still on her veins and not caring about her own pain she picked the brunette body and left.

* * *

 

By the time she managed to carry Regina’s body out of the room the smoke had already covered it all, the author’s scream’s echoing as she found the hidden door at the other side of the stairs into the room they had been in until the sweet-scented gas had made them fell asleep. It wasn’t until the crossed the threshold than her legs failed her, her knees hitting the floor hard as she gave in with a cry of pain. Regina’s unmoving body fell next to hers as the first orange lights began to lick the windows of the first floor inside the house.

Turning towards the brunette and pressing two shaky and bloodied fingers on the woman’s neck she checked for any breathing that came labored and slow but still there.

“I can’t lose you.” The blonde whispered towards the older woman; fearing that at any given moment ichor would start to came from the woman’s eyes. Something inside of her cracked as the thought appeared on her mind, tears streaming down her face while doing so.

She was running out of time and she knew it.

“Regina.” She pleaded, digging her fingers on the brunette’s hair, a flash of electricity she didn’t even think about bursting through her veins. “Regina, please.”

For a couple of seconds nothing moved but Emma’s lips, repeating her plead repeatedly, the flames at her back growing in intensity while doing so.  And then, after those excruciating seconds the brunette opened her eyes, purple sparks glazing them for a moment before they disappeared, almost as if they had never been there.

“Re…” Emma started, only to be cut short by the brunette’s own lips.

_“I think this is not going to look good on our report either.”_

_“Shut up.”_


	9. Epilogue

“Miss me?”

Regina smiled as Emma gave her a coffee cup, the steam coming from it enough proof that it had been recently made. Taking a sip from it and humming at the state she eyed the blonde who was still looking at her atop the lid of her own cup.

“Not really.” She joked, smirking while Emma feigned a pout.

They were outside the bullpen, just about to enter. White had let them have a week off after the incidents that had happened at the Vila but the days off, albeit sweet, had already reached their end. Today they were supposed to be given a new case, one that -as Emma had put that morning while getting dressed and blushing at the sight of love bits that peppered her neck- they hoped was much easier than the last one.

Newspapers had already all but forgotten about the previous articles they had shared about the “Author”. A detail that would exasperate Regina any other day of the week but not today, the memory of the small man and the blue fairy enough to let her blood freeze. They had, after all, come very close to end up dead.

“It’s very strange.” She pointed out while brushing her arm with Emma’s, the gesture a caress she hoped the blonde would understand. “How quickly Nora took control of the Fairies.”

Emma hummed; the quiet yet efficient secretary had been recently elected as the new CEO of the fairies. The rules of their factory didn’t really work as any others would and that had never reached the newspapers. Not after some “filtrations” about the actual plan of Reul Ghorm had been had been done. For Storybrooke the author and the mysterious killings had never happened by the way they behaved.

Something Regina found appalling

“You think we should keep an eye on her?” Emma asked, making her blink as she regained her bearings.

“I don’t think so.” She answered, the cup of her coffee hot enough for her to change the hand with which she was holding too, the beginning of a quick storm eliciting a drizzle that began to darken the road beneath her feet. “Not for now at least. Everything stays the same after all. Seems that the author wasn’t right.”

Emma hummed, moving closer to her.  She had been awfully quiet for the past week, enough for Regina to notice it. Something, however, seem now to be brimming from her lips and Regina let her be, Storybrooke’s clock ticking a few feet above them both.

“I think…” Emma began, clearing her throat before trying to speak again. She was wearing her leather jacket, red like rust framing her nervous face as she breathed. “That, in a way, he was right.”

Regina frowned. At Emma’s hip the buzzer flashed. Neither of them paid it any mind.

“How?” She asked, the bracelet on her wrist suddenly cold against her skin as Emma rose her right hand. Her wrist was free from any kind of bracelet but her fingers were hold in the same position Regina used when she used it to focalize the power from the mechanical motor strapped to her wrist.

Dimly at first and then stronger, the smell of ozone filled the air between them. Regina rose her gaze from Emma’s hand to the blonde’s eyes but the woman shook her head, waiting for the brunette to look back downwards.

It was imperceptible during those seconds, a reflection in the air product of the quickly warming temperatures. As seconds passed, however, it became clear than it wasn’t an illusion. In the middle of Emma’s hand, trapped between her fingers which it licked almost curiously, there was a flame. Much smaller than Regina’s but one done without any kind of machine.

“Seems that magic is returning.” Emma finished with a quick smile towards Regina who couldn’t but wonder if she had seen the blonde any more beautiful than she was now. “Seems that he was right.”

Things could have changed after all. Regina thought, nodding alongside with Emma before taking one step forwards, not caring a thing about how close there were from their boss, the buzzing never stopping on Emma’s hips as she pushed them onto the building’s walls.

The kiss was quick, quicker than she would have liked but it, still, made her tingle, a spark of that same ozone scent jumping from Emma to her, coiling around her stomach.

“Seems that he was.”

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a lot of things have happened after I decided to write this crazy idea half a murder mystery half a sci-fi craziness. I still think that I could have wrote more, more about Emma, more about Regina. More about the two of them. I, however, wanted to explore the idea of them being already in love but not yet brave enough to tell each other what they felt. What started like that ended up being a dramatic scene in where Emma's inherent magic woke Regina up. -snorts- I'm still too much of a romantic I guess.  
> I couldn't have done this without a lot of wonderful people who heard me moan and complain as I began the horrible last few weeks of waiting. To them; thank you. You are the artists. (Misslane, LadyBardo, BrightandWitty, Kyravalon, BrittanysNieve, Napfreak, EliaMuffin, MeryKinder... I will do a proper thank you note. I don't have the words for what you guys did.)  
> To the readers that managed to got until here... I hope you enjoyed the ride. I certainly did and I will be more than happy to discuss what this crazy idea was back at my tumblr. I also know that the amazing SuperNova mods are holding a comment contest (follow the link if you want to know more > http://sqsupernova.tumblr.com/post/164792441694/announcing-the-sqsn-comments-contest-a-reward-for ) So I really should start with my own comments to the many amazing fics this second BB has brought with it. ;)   
> Viva La SwanQueen!!


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